  The massive binary system formed by $\eta$ Car and an unknown companion is a
strong source at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths. Close to the stars,
continuum bremsstrahlung and radio recombination lines originate in the massive
ionized wind of $\eta$ Car and in several compact sources of high density
plasma. Molecular lines are also detected at these wavelengths, some of them
are seen in absorption towards the continuum emission region, many of them
revealed by ALMA observations. However, because the ALMA atmospheric
calibration is performed in a low spectral resolution mode, telluric lines can
still be present in some high-resolution spectra of scientific products, which
could lead to a false identification of molecules. Since $\eta$ Carinae is a
bright source, the issue is even more critical because some features can be
highlighted. In this work, we explore three different sets of ALMA archive data
of $\eta$ Car, including high resolution (0.065" x 0.043") observations
recently published by our group, to verify which of these absorption lines are
real and discuss their origin. We conclude that some of them truly originate in
clouds close to the binary system, while others are artifacts of a faulty
elimination of telluric lines during ALMA calibration procedure. We found that
these absorption lines are not present in the phase calibrators because they
are much weaker than $\eta$ Car, where the absorption line appears because the
high intensity continuum enhances the small individual systematic calibration
errors.
