Tuberculosis,
AIDS and Breathalyzers
Information
courtesy of Lawrence Taylor - DUIblog
If
you are arrested for drunk driving, you will probably be transported
to a police station and taken to a room where there is a breath
machine sitting on a table. There may already be another arrestee
sitting at the table, blowing into the machine. When he is finished,
the officer will (hopefully) replace the mouthpiece on the tube
connected to the machine, hand it to you and say "Blow in here,
and keep blowing until I tell you to stop, then wait and do it again".
Afterwards,
you may find yourself thinking, "I wonder how many people have
used that machine today?" And the uncomfortable thought may
follow, "I wonder if any of them had tuberculosis?...or AIDS?"
If
you are in a metropolitan area, maybe a dozen or more suspects breathed
into that machine before you; in the previous month, hundreds. And
none of them were screened for communicable disease.
ITEM....From
the Minnesota Department of Health's Facts on AIDS: A Law Enforcement
Guide: "Use disposable breathalyzer masks on drunk driving
suspects (HIV has been found in the saliva of some HIV-infected
patients)...These precautions are also intended to reduce one's
risk of becoming exposed to other infectious agents including hepatitis."
Assuming
that the police do replace the mask/mouthpiece before each test,
what about the breath tube? The mouthpiece is connected to a heated
tube which carries the breath sample from the mouthpiece into the
machine's sample chamber. If microbes can reside in a mouthpiece,
they can certainly reside in the connecting tube. And the tube cannot
be changed.
ITEM....From
the manufacturer of BreathScan, a portable and disposable breath
testing device: "The BreathScan tester can be used once and
then disposed of, minimizing contamination associated with repeated
use of non-disposable units (no AIDS cross-transmission)...."
(emphasis added)
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