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What's inside your water

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By Teri Karush Rogers  |
May 19, 2009 - 2:39PM
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If you can’t seem to get squeaky clean after your shower, it may be because your building has added sodium silicate to your water.

“In the old buildings with some iron pipe in them, it stops the rust.  And in the new buildings sometimes, to cut down on brown water they actually end up coating the iron particles,” says Phil Kraus, the president of Fred Smith Plumbing & Heating Company, which services around 850 Manhattan co-op and condo buildings.

“I don’t recommend using it if you don’t need chemicals in the water, but it’s FDA approved so I’m not going to say I don’t approve,” says the plumbing expert. “If you put too much sodium silicate in the water it doesn’t necessarily make it sudsy but it gives it a slimy feel like if you take a shower and can’t get the soap off—it’s like a film you can feel in your body. It can come and go from one day to the next.”

We find this kind of shocking – how about you? We’d love to hear from anyone who can help assess the health risks of sodium silicate, if any.

Teri Rogers Headshot - Floral

Teri Karush Rogers

Founder & Publisher

Founder and publisher Teri Karush Rogers launched Brick Underground in 2009. As a freelance journalist, she had previously covered New York City real estate for The New York Times. Teri has been featured as an expert on New York City residential real estate by The New York Times, New York Daily News, amNew York, NBC Nightly News, The Real Deal, Business Insider, the Huffington Post, and NY1 News, among others. Teri earned a BA in journalism and a law degree from New York University.

Brick Underground articles occasionally include the expertise of, or information about, advertising partners when relevant to the story. We will never promote an advertiser's product without making the relationship clear to our readers.

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