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.
