Screening of Suspected Liquids to Alcoholic Drinks by a Qualitative Chemical Kit

Abstract

Alcohol consumption is prohibited in Iran and it has caused many problems in various fields. This research is done to evaluate a new qualitative screening kit (for rapid detection of alcoholic beverages from nonalcoholic liquids) and to avoid more wasting time and money. For this purpose, the ethanol content of 839 suspected liquids prepared from the alcohol lab of legal medicine (Guilan province, Iran) was measured by a gas chromatography apparatus. At the same time, a newly designed kit based on the sulfochromic acid method was also used to separate negative samples (with ethanol equal or less than 3% volume/volume) from the others. Out of 839 samples, the ethanol content of 163 (19.43%) cases was appraised negatively. While most of the samples (676 cases or 80.57%) had ethanol more than 3% (positive results) with a mean of 21.68mg/L. Three samples (0.36%) had high levels of methanol which were interpreted as false positive due to the nonspecificity of the used method. Our results suggest the used kit has suitable efficiency for screening ethanol content of suspected liquids because the negative results of the kit have definite diagnostic value. However, a confirmative test (like gas chromatography) is needed for validation of the positive results.