Breathalyzer has hidden agenda — sniffs out lung cancer on the cheap

While handheld/personal breathalyzers are a drinkers best friend as the difference between a good night with a sweet morning or a bad night resulting in a hefty fine and lengthy jail stint is a mere 0.08%. For those who don’t drink, a breathalyzer is obviously useless. For those that do, and do so often or simply want to know precisely when they’ve had a tad too much. Sure you can get any run of the mill breathalyzer that sniffs out alcohol on your breath. Or, you can go the extra mile and get a little extra bang for your buck. How so? How about a breathalyzer with a built in lung cancer sniffer? Sound science fictional? Scientist in Israel are close to getting an actual working portable breathalyzer and lung cancer sniffing device that as you can guess, will determine your blood alcohol level and if you have lung cancer. Spiffy huh. Before, pretreatement of your breath was needed, adding extra time, complexity, and procedures into the mix that ultimately slow down the overall process. However, this new method can do without that pesky pretreatement junk meaning faster detection and hopefully recovery. Hopefully the kinks can be worked out in the near term so that Lung cancer patients’ longevity can be increased, providing them with longer years of healthy living.

Source: Dvice, Ars Technica, Image Source