BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of the Invention

This invention generally relates to UV light sanitizers, and more specifically, to a personal, portable, handheld UV light sanitizer and method of use for safely sanitizing both a user's hand and target surfaces spaced from the sanitizer with UV light radiation.

Discussion of the Prior Art

It is well known, that ultraviolet radiation has a deleterious effect on viruses. Portable LV light sanitizers that radiate surfaces spaced from the person holding the portable device are well known. Examples of such portable ultraviolet radiation devices are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,579,495 issued. Jun. 17, 2003 to Maiden; U.S. Pat. No. 5,900,212 issued May 4, 1999 to Maiden et al. used to treat water, and patents, cited therein, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference.

Other examples of portable UV radiation devices are shown in Published U.S. patent applications 2015/0359915 of Farren et al. published Dec. 17, 2015; 2004/0256581 of Au et al. published Dec. 23, 2004; 2006/0079948 of Dawson published Apr. 13, 2006; 2007/0055195 of Browne published Mar. 8, 2007; 201610184467 of Cheng et al. published Jun. 30, 2016; 2017/0080116 of Kreiner et al. published Mar. 23, 2017; 2017/0216466 of Dujowich et al. published Aug. 3, 2017; 2006/0078484 of Greep published Apr. 13, 2006 and 2017/0157276 of Dobrinsky et al., published Jun. 8, 2017, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference

While portable, unfortunately, none of these known devices are designed for, or are well adapted to, sterilizing a user's own hands and, in some of the units described in the above references, even special care is taken to avoid radiation of the user's hand or other skin surfaces.

In Published U.S. patent application 2019/011780 of Hishinuma et al. published Apr. 25, 2019, a hot air hand dryer incorporates a UV disinfection device. However, the hand dryer is fixedly attached to a wall, is not portable and is not designed to be carried in a user's hand and used at locations spaced from the hand dryer. Generally, such a fixedly attached hand dryer is only going to be used after a person has already washed their hands of any infectious virus, etc. and is of questionable actual benefit.

A portable, handheld UV light sanitizer is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 10,849,995 issued Dec. 1, 2020 to Crosby which may be held in a hand while being sanitized but due to the size, shape and configuration of the housing unsafe UV light leakage beyond the user's hand is not prevented. It appears that no provision is made to prevent excessive and thus unsafe radiation of the user's hand. Disadvantageously, this hand sanitizer may only be used to sanitize the user's hand and no other surfaces. A further problem is that due to the configuration of the housing and placement of the UV light sources, radiation is not uniformly distributed across a user's had when holding the sanitizer housing.

Generally, it is believe that all of the known portable UV hand sanitizers suffer from one or more defects that do not adequately protect the user from excessive and thus damaging radiation of a user's skin and are not suitable for both hand sanitizing and sanitization of non-skin surfaces spaced from the user's hand. Accordingly, sanitization can only occur after a user has already touched a pathogen coated surface and possibly already passed the pathogens to other parts of the user's body that may have been touched.

During the pandemic, available personal liquid hand sanitizers can quickly be used up and may not be easily replaced due to scarcity in the market because of and hording or excessive demand exceeding production and distribution capacity. Even when the pandemic is over, such personal liquid hand sanitizers, may once again become scarce if another virus arises or the Corona-19 virus or variant returns.

Accordingly, during this time of corona virus pandemic and shortages of liquid hand sanitizers, there is an urgent need to provide an alternative and convenient means that a person can carry to sanitize their hands after touching a surface, such as a door knob or grocery item suspected of harboring dangerous pathogens. their own hands that is easy to carry and can easily be used immediately after touching door handles, food items and other like surfaces that one may touch and which may be covered with dangerous microscopic virus and the like. There is also a need for a person to be able with the same device to sanitize a suspect surface prior to touching the surface to increase the chance of avoiding any infectious contact, whatsoever, with pathogenic viruses or bacteria.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

It is therefore a general object of the present invention to provide a portable, personal, handheld UV sterilization device for personal use to sanitize both a user's hand holding the sanitizer and target surfaces spaced from the user's hand and the sanitizer and a method of use that that is both more efficacious and safer than known portable UV sanitizers.

More particularly, it is an object to provide a personal, portable, handheld UV light sanitizer, having an elongate tubular housing with a light transmittable outer wall having an outer surface extending between opposite housing ends, said tubular housing having a peripheral dimension approximately equal to the length of a user's hand measured from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the middle finger and a width approximately equal the width of a hand, said width and length enabling a user to grasp the tubular housing and substantially wrap their hands around and cover substantially the entire surface of the tubular housing with substantially the entirety of user's palm, fingers and thumb in intimate contact with the housing surface, a UV light source protectively contained within an interior of the tubular housing in a location to uniformly radiate UV light outwardly from the interior and through the light transmittable wall surface to uniformly impinge the skin surface of the user's hand when grasping the tubular housing with a palm and fingers and thumb of the user's hand wrapped substantially entirely around the tubular housing to sanitize substantially all the surface of the palm and inside surfaces of the fingers and thumb of the user's hand, a portable power source mounted within the housing and connectable with the LTV light source, means carried by the house for initiating energization of the UV light source for a single safe hand sanitization cycle time period when the user's hand is wrapped around the housing, and means for automatically controlling termination of energization of the UV light source to prevent excessive UV radiation of the user's hand.

Preferably, the energizing initiating means includes at least one of a UV light source switch carried at the outer surface of tubular housing energized by a user actuating a the UV light source switch while grasping the tubular housing intermediate the opposite ends. The single actuation switch is preferably recessed to avoid inadvertent actuation when the user is merely handling the sanitizer without the user's hand wrapped around the tubular housing. Alternatively, insuring that a user's hand is wrapped around the tubular housing when the UV light source is energized, multiple UV light source actuation microswitches connected in series circuit may be located at multiple positions around the periphery of the tubular housing that must be actuated by the user's hand simultaneously in order to initiate energization. Inadvertent energization of the UV light when the user's hand is not wrapped around the tubular housing may also be prevented by means employing multiple visible light sensors or infrared sensors carried around the tubular housing for sensing whether a user's hand is wrapped around the light transmittable tubular housing.

In the preferred embodiment, a pair of annular walls respectively located at the opposite ends may be provided to block stray UV light from radiating beyond the opposite ends, and masking means may be provided to block radial UV light leakage. The rearward one of the annular walls may also provide a bearing surface to prevent slippage from the user's hand, while the forward annular wall may provide suitable mounting for distance and skin sensors, actuation switches and indicator lights and audio speakers.

In order to limit UV radial light leakage, at least one of a resilient mask member mounted around the tubular housing, or a flexible mask member wrapped around the tubular housing masks may be provided if needed to cover any gaps between the edges of the user's hand and the ends of the light transmittable tubular housing. If a user's hand is longer than the girth, or peripheral length of the tubular housing, a UV light transmittable material secured to the outer surface of the tubular housing may be provided to increase the size of the girth to fit the user's hand.

Yet a further object of the invention is to also provide means carried by the housing for sanitization of non-skin surfaces spaced from the tubular housing and the hand of the user. Preferably, the non-skin surface sanitization means includes another UV light source located at one of the opposite ends of the tubular housing and positioned to radiate directed outwardly from the tubular housing in the elongate direction of the elongate tubular housing or in a direction transverse to the elongate direction, and a non-skin actuation switch carried by the body to energize the other UV light source with the portable power supply. Preferably energization of the one UV light source used to radiate the user's hand is prevented when the other UV light source is energized to radiate a suspect target spaced from the user.

Advantageously, for purposes of safety, the portable, handheld UV light sanitizer includes means sensing if the other UV light source is directed at a person's skin, and means for responsive to the sensing means for automatically deenergizing the second UV light source if skin is detected to prevent unintended or unsafe radiation of a user's skin without radiation time period limitations.

Further, preferably means are provided for preventing unsafe excessive radiation longer than a preselected maximum safe time period for a single energization of the UV light source and for preventing more than a preselected number of initiations of energization or durations of energization of the one LTV light source over a preselected, past, accumulative time period. Initiation of a hand sanitization cycle too soon after the end of an immediately prior successive hand sanitization cycle is also prevented.

Preferably, a range finder and means responsive to the range finder to adjust the intensity of the radiation, to provide an indication if a target surface is out of range or to automatically increase the power of the UV radiation is provided.

Another object of the invention is to provide a method for a user to safely use UV light radiation to reduce the risk of infection from pathogenic viruses or bacteria that may be on a suspect surface that a person wishes to touch or has touched, comprising the steps of (1) carrying a single handheld UV light sanitizer that may be used alternatively in either a hand sanitization mode of operation in either a non-skin surface sanitization mode or a skin surface sanitization mode with safety features to reduce the risks of excessive radiation of a user's skin, (2) prior to touching any suspect non-skin surfaces, actuating the UV light source in the non-skin surface sanitization mode to selectively radiate said suspect non-skin surfaces with sufficient intensity to kill or disable the pathogens that may be harboring on said non-skin target surfaces, and (3) after touching any suspect non-skin surfaces with a user's hand, actuating the UV light source in a skin surface sanitization mode to radiate the user's hand.

Preferably, the method includes the step of preventing unsafe excessive radiation of the user's skin by limiting at least one of (1) a single hand sanitization cycle time period measured between the time of initiation of energization of the UV light source and the automatic termination of energization after a preselected maximum preselected time period has lapsed, or (2) the number of energizations during a preselected past time period exceed a preselected safe member.

Yet, a further object of the invention is to provide a method of sanitizing a surface with a personal, portable, hand-held UV light sanitizer, by performance of the steps of (1) directing a UV light source of the sanitizer at a target surface to be sanitized, (2) selectively energizing the UV light source to radiate the target surface with UV light radiation, (3) sensing a target distance signal from the sanitizer indicating whether the target surface distant for the UV light source for the radiation intensity at the surface to be of sufficient strength to kill or disable pathogenic viruses or bacteria on the target surface and (4) responding to the target distance signal as necessary to locate the UV light source sufficiently close to the target surface to ensure that the radiation intensity is sufficient to kill or disable pathogenic viruses or bacteria on the target surface.

Preferably, target distance signal is one of a visual light signal, an audio signal or a tactile vibration signal. It may be the color of a visible light source that is directed at the target surface to radiate the target surface with visible light also being radiated with UV light.

Still, another objective of the invention is provision of a method of safely sanitizing a non-skin surface with a personal, portable, hand-held UV light sanitizer, by performance of (1) energizing a UV light source to radiate a surface at which the UV light source may be directed, (2) sensing with an infrared light sensor if the UV light source has been inadvertently directed at a skin surface, (3) and (3) automatically deenergizing the UV light source in response to skin surface sensing means sensing that the UV light source is directed at a skin surface. Preferably, the step of sensing is performed by sensing infrared radiation.

One more objective of the invention is to provide a method of safely sanitizing a user's skin with a personal, portable hand-held UV light sanitizer, comprising the steps of (1) initiating energization of a UV light source while directed at a user's skin to radiate the use skin with UV light radiation, (2) automatically terminating energization of the UV light source after a preselected maximum sanitization cycle time period and (3) automatically preventing energization of the UV light source whenever the total radiation time during a prior preselected prior time period exceeds a preselected maximum safe total radiation time.

