I Was Selected to Present at the American Chemical Society Conference

A blood alcohol unit conversion error hiding in plain sight

I’m honored and thrilled to share that I have been selected to give an oral presentation at the upcoming American Chemical Society conference.

My presentation is titled:

Forensic blood and breath alcohol unit inconsistency: Unit conversion error hiding in plain sight

The presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, August 26, 2026, at 10:00 AM.

This talk is based on my recent work examining a subtle but important issue in forensic alcohol reporting: the inconsistency between statutory language that defines blood alcohol concentration as “percent by weight” and the mass/volume units commonly used in modern forensic blood and breath alcohol testing.

Whole blood has a density greater than that of water, so percent by weight and grams per deciliter are not equivalent units.

When those units are treated as interchangeable, alcohol concentrations are systematically overstated. The same concern can carry over into breath alcohol reporting when breath results are converted and interpreted as blood alcohol concentrations without proper unit reconciliation.

The core issue is not whether forensic instruments can measure ethanol. They can.

The issue is whether the reported value is being expressed in the same unit that the law actually requires.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to discuss this topic with a broader chemistry and forensic science audience at ACS. Unit consistency may not be flashy, but it is foundational to reliable measurement, fair interpretation, and scientifically sound forensic reporting.