A man got behind the wheel 2 per mille drunk in Belgium, it was proven that he hadn’t drunk anything – 2024-04-27 20:51:56

The man had blown the police’s breathalyzer readings of more than two per thousand. Petteri Paalasmaa

A Belgian brewery employee has been acquitted of drunk driving charges brought against him. The man had not consumed alcohol, but his body had produced the ethanol detected by the breathalyzer by itself. Among other things, the US media ABC News reported on the strange incident.

The man suffers from the so-called brewer’s syndrome (in English auto-brewery syndrome i.e. ABS). Only about 20 diagnosed cases are officially known in the world.

When a person suffering from this rare disease eats carbohydrates, the bacteria or fungi living in their intestines produce ethanol after consuming large amounts of them.

Ethanol is absorbed in the small intestine, and the blood alcohol content of a person suffering from it can rise drastically.

Symptoms of this include drunken-like slurred speech, convulsions and loss of motor functions.

The judge did not impose a driving ban

In the case of a Belgian man, the independent statements of three different doctors ultimately saved him from drunk driving charges. All the doctors testified that the man really suffered from a rare syndrome.

The judge in the case stated that the man had not experienced the symptoms of intoxication. The man was also not banned from driving.

The charges go back to 2022, when the police measured 0.91 milligrams of alcohol per liter in the breath test of the man. In the second blow just a month later, the reading was 0.71 milligrams per liter. In Finland, the amounts correspond to about 2.18 per thousand and 1.7 per thousand of hops.

In Belgium, the drink driving limit is the same as in Finland, i.e. 0.5 per thousand.