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Blood alcohol content

metric of alcohol intoxication

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ886470 ↗
Source-derived summary

Blood alcohol content (BAC), also known as blood alcohol concentration or blood alcohol level, is the concentration of alcohol in a person's blood, measured for legal or medical purposes.

BAC is expressed as the mass of alcohol per unit volume of blood. In the United States and many other countries, it is commonly reported as a percentage, such as 0.08% (equivalent to 0.8 g/L). Legal limits for driving vary by country, ranging from zero tolerance policies to 0.08%. Levels above 0.40% (4 g/L) may be fatal.

Units of measurement

BAC is the mass of alcohol per unit volume of blood. The SI unit is kilogram per cubic metre (kg/m3), though it is commonly reported as grams per liter (g/L). Reporting conventions vary by country.

In the United States and several other countries, BAC is expressed as a percentage, such as 0.05%. This corresponds to 0.05 grams per deciliter of blood.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Blood alcohol content” is metric of alcohol intoxication. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Blood, alcohol and content, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 150-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Blood, alcohol and content is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “metric of alcohol intoxication” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q886470. The Library of Congress control number is sh85014959. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Blood alcohol content”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Blood alcohol content primary sources, Blood alcohol content archive and Blood research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Blood alcohol content” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.