Water-dispersible pressure sensitive adhesive compositions have many uses. For example, such adhesives are useful with garments such as gowns, sheets, drapes, and other mammalian body coverings, etc. which are required during surgery and other aseptic and non-aseptic procedures. Many of these procedures are carried out in the normal operation of hospitals, medical and dental clinics and the like. Additionally, such adhesives are useful with sterilization indicator tapes.
In such applications, it is essential that the adhesive be resistant to body fluids normally encountered during use, yet be dispersible under alkaline conditions such as are commonly encountered during laundering.
A number of water dispersible adhesive systems are known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,125,995 (D'Haese et al), WO 93/06184 (D'Haese), U.S. Pat. No. 4,413,080 (Blake), U.S. Pat. No. 4,569,960 (Blake), and copending application U.S. Ser. No. 07/889,647 filed May 28, 1992 (Patnode et al).
Examples of other water-dispersible pressure sensitive adhesives include U.S. Pat. No. 3,865,770 (Blake), U.S. Pat. No. 3,441,430 (Peterson) and U.S. Pat. No. 2,838,421 (Sohl).
A variety of other pressure-sensitive adhesives are said to be either water-soluble or water-dispersible. See, for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,413,082 (Gleichenhagen et al), U.S. Pat. No. 4,341,680 (Hauber et al), European Patent Publication 0 352 442, U.S. Pat. No. 3,152,940 (Abel et al), U.S. Pat. No. 4,338,432 (Eskay), U.S. Pat. No. 3,096,202 (deGroot von Arx), European Patent Publication 0 297 451 (Knutson et al), U.S. Pat. No. 3,763,117 (McKenna et al), and U.S. Pat. No. 3,890,292 (Bohme et al).
The present invention provides a pressure sensitive adhesive composition and articles that employ the adhesive which can be used in a variety of applications. The adhesive is especially well suited for preparing pressure sensitive adhesives tapes which can be used with products such as gowns, sheets, drapes, etc. used in hospitals and medical and dental clinics. The adhesives can also be used in a variety of other applications such as sterilization indicator tapes and labels.