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Comment by eLobato | Hacker News Reader

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eLobato·

They demo'ed this with Listerine instead of real alcohol and it worked well. Honestly I'm tempted to buy a Drinkshield.

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Unless they drank enough Listerine to become drunk, I would suggest the opposite.

It isn't measuring BAC very well at all if it is easily confused by someone who has used mouthwash.

EDIT: That's not to say it isn't an awesome project, which it definitely is :)

It's worth noting that swishing Listerine (which does contan real alcohol) will fool police breathalyzers, if you use it minutes before the test. This is why you do a long series of physical coordination tests before finally getting a breathalyzer test when being pulled over:

http://askville.amazon.com/Crest-mouthwash-make-fail-breatha...

Indeed, this is exactly what we did in our demo! We just swished with Listerine and immediately breathalyzed on stage and it worked great.

We found that the Listerine effect seems to diminish quickly after several minutes.

can you get drunk by drinking listerine?

I looked it up and it is about 21% ethanol. Which is more than most drinks I think.

EDIT: On further research it seems that they put stuff into mouthwash to make it undrinkable, in order to prevent abuse and avoid taxes and regulation on alcohol. That doesn't prevent you from ingesting it however. It's just supposed to make it unpleasant.

If it had worked maybe they wouldn't have committed this project in the first place.

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