Colgate Palmolive Company

James M Thomas

Guofeng Xu

Shaotang Yuan

Rong Dong

Ronald D Kern

Kevern Fraser

Disclosed is a method of forming a uniform coating onto a tooth surface, which method includes: forming droplets by spraying an orally acceptable coating material through a spray nozzle, and depositing the droplets onto the tooth surface to thereby form a uniform coating. In the method, the droplets have a volume-averaged droplet size of about 1 &#x3bc;m to about 100 &#x3bc;m, a spray including the droplets travels from a tip of the spray nozzle towards the tooth surface at a spray rate of less than about 10 milliliters/minute, and the droplets include a film-forming polymer, a therapeutic agent and/or a cosmetic agent.

Method of forming a uniform cosmetic or therapeutic coating on teeth

An antistatic and fabric softening laundry wash cycle additive article includes an antistatic and fabric softening composition in a filtering container, from which a complex of cationic surfactant and anionic surfactant is released into the wash water through the filtering walls of the container. The particles of the released complex, the size of which are controlled by the sizes of the filtering openings in the container walls, are small enough so that they do not form objectionable greasy deposits on the laundry, such as often results when antistatic and fabric softening cationic surfactant is present with anionic surfactant in a detergent composition, or is added to the wash water with such detergent composition. The cationic surfactant may be present in the filtering container as a complex with anionic surfactant or in mixture with anionic surfactant, in particulate form. It is preferred that it be present as such a mixture and also present may be suitable functional and aesthetic materials, such as: bentonite, builders and fillers, which add bulk to the product and separate the reactive anionic and cationic materials during storage; emulsifiers, which facilitate the production of cationic/anionic complex in finely divided emulsified form after the article is added to the wash water, thereby facilitating passage of such complex in such finely divided, emulsified form through the filtering container, and preventing greasy deposition of such complex on the laundry being washed; and perfume. Also within the invention are processes for simultaneously washing laundry and treating it to soften it and make it antistatic, in which processes the filtering container of this invention, preferably as a heat sealed pouch of nonwoven polyester or other suitable synthetic organic polymer in fibrous form, and containing the cationic/anionic surfactants mixture, is added to the wash water. Preferably, the invented article is also present in the rinse water and is transferred to an automatic laundry dryer with the laundry being dried. The greater advantages of the invented process are obtained when the laundry detergent employed is an anionic detergent but the invented articles may also be used in the wash cycle when nonionic or other types of detergents are employed.

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Woodbridge, NJ, United States of America

James M Thomas