vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #596 / Social life / Reading article...

Residents of several buildings in the Primorye town of Nakhodka have recently been unpleasantly surprised to find greenish water running from their cold water taps. The explanation was simple – the green-colored water from central-heating radiators got into the drinking water pipes.

Nakhodka’s heating supply utility company long ago decided to color the water used for radiators to stop residents from using it as a source of hot water in the flats. Some apartments in older buildings do not have supplies of hot water, and the inventive residents tried to use the hot water from their radiators.

The green coloring, uranine, added by the utility company to the heating water is not harmful to a person’s health, the officials assured. Uranine, a disodium salt of fluorescent dyes, can be added to the liquid for various purposes. However, the fact that the cold water from the tap has become green did not inspire those wishing to make tea or do laundry.

The utility company hastily checked the heating systems in the buildings which had suffered from green water and discovered that in some apartments the pipes for drinking water and heating water cross each other, and when the pressure is high, water from the central-heating system can come through the drinking taps.

Margarita Amosova, an expert for the federal consumer rights protection watchdog, said that the existing connections should be eliminated and residents who violate water service regulations should be punished by the city’s communal services department.