부산대학교 도서관

It is very important to determine whether ethanol(ethyl alcohol, EtOH) detection is due to EtOH of drinking or fermentation EtOH of postmortem. Fermentation EtOH can be simply produced in a short period of time, therefore, it makes a clear distinction between fermentation EtOH and EtOH of drinking. It was necessary to suspect the possibility that the detection of EtOH was determined less than 0.50 g/L of EtOH. In the case of this study, the woodworker died in a fall while working, 0.24 g/L of EtOH was detected, and n-propanol(n‒PrOH) and n-butanol(n‒BuOH) of indicator in the decomposed body were not detected. Further analysis of ethyl glucuronide(EtG) and ethyl sulfate(EtS) showed that EtG was 0.26 mg/L, and EtS was 0.14 mg/L. The results confirmed that the worker was drunk during the incident. Moreover, when the EtOH‒to‒EtG ratio in blood(EtOH in g/L, EtG in mg/L) and EtG or EtS concentration(mg/L) are determined, the drinking time and the amount of the drinking can be estimated. According to our previous results with reference, in the case of the worker could be estimated to drink about 3‒4 hours, and the amount of EtOH was about 0.5 g/kg(EtOH dose/body weight). Therefore, two subsequent EtG/EtOH ratio and EtG or EtS in blood supports information of recent drinking.