Using asthma inhalers can give false positive results in breath tests

Spanish researchers have shown that asthma inhalers can give readings in breath alcohol tests that are, in most cases, above the legal limit fixed by Spanish traffic police.

Most worrying is the fact that aerosols without ethanol as the vehicle produced false positive results, says University of Cadiz pharmacologist Juan Manuel Ignacio-Garcia, lead author of the report (Medicina Clinica 2002;118:332-4).

The study was on 60 volunteers with asthma attending the Hospital Comarcal de Ronda in Cadiz. Ten minutes before the participants were given an inhaler to use, they underwent a breath test on the Alcotest 7110-E device, an infrared breath alcohol...