Before a police breath-alcohol test, officers typically watch a driver for 15 to 20 minutes to make sure nothing, such as a burp or regurgitation, puts alcohol from the stomach into the mouth. A new forensic report argues that this safeguard may miss a quieter route: tiny amounts of stomach contents slipping into the airway in people with chronic acid reflux, followed by coughing near the time of the test.
The report, published May 4 in the Medico-Legal Journal, describes two Minnesota drivers arrested for DUI whose breath-test readings showed a pattern the author says is consistent with alcohol contamination from the mouth or airway. Both men had long-standing gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD.
