Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob Petrie E395
when this all came out a couple of weeks ago on dragracing online I asked my sister in law about this. She works for the state of Virginia crime lab and regularlly testifies in both drug and alcohol DUI cases. Basiclly what I understand now is if we have alcohol in our bodies when we die it turns into a ethanol type substance and by doing blood work and calculating the amounts of it in your blood they can determine how much you may have had to drink or what your blood alchol level might have been at the time of death. She went on to say as a example that if a cdl licened person such as myself were to go out and drink heavily the night before work and get in a truck wreck early the next morning it is likely I would show this kind of stuff in my system and If I survived the accident I would lose my cdl license in most states. My understanding is that while you may not appear or act drunk all of the effects even the next day are not completely out of your system. She tried to go on about a bunch of other stuff relating to how the body breaks down alcohol but to be honest alot of it was scientific crap that was way over my head and I would have trouble explaining it or I would.
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For alcohol to show up in a person's blood stream, ingestion by mouth isn't the only way for it to happen. Breathing the fumes can get you there. I owned a bar in the mid-eighties. I walked in one afternoon, and the bartender was in tears. The top shelf had pulled away from the wall maybe 2 minutes before I walked in, dumping about 20 bottles of premium liquor (it literally was "top shelf") to the floor, breaking most of them. She was worried she was going to get fired because of the cost of the liquor that ended up in a pool on the floor. It wasn't her fault, the shelf bracket anchors weren't as secure as they should have been. I told her to take care of customers, and I'd mop up the mess. I got literally got drunk during 10-15 minutes of cleaning up the mess from the fumes. I'm not talking a .02 BAC, more like a .20 BAC, stumbling drunk without drinking a drop.
I'd be interested in seeing if anyone has ever done a study or test on alcohol absorption by people working on and/or driving any car that runs on any percentage of alcohol as a fuel. I'd be willing to bet inhaling the fumes alone will register on any available on-site measuring device. How methanol fume inhalation (burning or not) would register as ethanol in a human body during an autopsy would also be interesting to know.
I honestly believe Scott having a BAC that low is a non-starter - it had nothing to do with his condition or the accident..