Increased awareness of the devastating effects of alcohol misuse on our highways, workplaces and families, as well as on the individual, has resulted in increased social pressure to enforce driving-while-intoxicated laws and to develop educational, prevention and treatment programs. One aspect of this movement is to develop improved sobriety testing to ensure that laws are properly and fairly enforced and that there is compliance with abstinence in treatment. Although sophisticated blood and breath testing devices are available, field tests suggest that saliva alcohol tests based on alcohol-oxidase methodology offer advantages in portability, ease of administration, and cost and time efficiency. We evaluated the validity and reliability of a simple saliva test, based on the enzymatic oxidation of alcohol by alcohol oxidase, for estimating blood alcohol concentration. Ten subjects consumed various doses of alcohol and multiple saliva samples were obtained using alcohol sensitive saliva strips that change color in proportion to the concentration of alcohol. The reflectance values of reacted saliva strips were read by meter and estimates of blood alcohol concentration in the range of 10-90 mg/dl were compared to simultaneous estimates obtained from breath analysis using a Breathalyzer Model 900A. We also examined how alcohol levels changed over time in alcohol reacted saliva strips. The results of regression analysis indicated that the saliva strips and the Breathalyzer gave reasonably close estimates (r = 0.89-.90) of blood alcohol concentration. Correlation coefficents for the values of saliva samples read by meter measured at 10 minutes and at 18 days after collection ranged from .90 to 1.00, showing high test-retest reliability despite storage.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)