How long does alcohol stay in urine AFTER urinating?
Asked by
Peether (
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December 1st, 2010
Does alcohol in urine continue to dissipate after urinating? To put it another way, after a urine sample is taken, must it be tested within a certain time in order to detect alcohol? If so, is there an authority (book, etc.) I can cite to for this?
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3 Answers
This and this should answer all of your questions. This test can detect alcohol 80 hours after drinking.
@syz talks about finding evidence of alcohol in the urine after an amount of time before the urine sample is taken. But the presence of alcohol does not dissipate from the sample; it stays for possible future testing.
Police don’t rush the samples to a lab for fear of evaporation. If it dissipated from samples, it wouldn’t be useful for evidence.
Dissipation isn’t a problem but the specific test used an be critical.
A widely-used urine alcohol test is unreliable warns the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The EtG urine test is used to test compliance of people legally prohibited from drinking.
The federal agency has issued a warning that the test is so sensitive that it can falsely read positive for alcohol consumption if the test-taker has used an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, taken medication containing alcohol, or consumed foods containing alcohol. For example, the test might report alcohol consumption if a person drinks orange juice that has been in a refrigerator too long.
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/InTheNews/Etc/20061102140042.html
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