Public Health

While those don't tell the full story, they can be useful if deciding to have your water tested at a lab.

Everyone should spend at least a few bucks to know what they will be drinking at home on a regular basis, IMHO.

Lab testing is going to be a waste of money for most people not using well water, unless you have a strong reason to suspect something is up aside from test-strip reaults. Especially seeing as how the water chemistry is going to change at least twice per year when the water provider switches from chlorine to the chloramines and vice-versa. And pretty much all providers will give you a report of exactly what's in the water on a monthly basis if you ask for it.

Lab results would be useful if you're serious about homebrewing beer and don't want to build up the water profile from scratch or really into baking, though. Just don't do it in the early Spring/Fall, because that's when the treatment chemicals switch and the results aren't going to be representative of what the water is really like for that time of the year.

Hah. I've been swimming in freshwater lakes, rivers, and reservoirs for about 65 years. Ain't nothin' takin' me down.

Also a former water treatment plant operator, so I should probably not be quite so complacent. :)

Some people pour water up their nose. I saw someone doing it in the military. Said it felt great. I wasn't convinced.

Boil the water, and then let it cool

I think Kurzgesagt made a video about how these guys sneak into the brain, they follow the olfactory nerve I believe. They didn't evolve to eat brains, it's just an unhappy coincidence.

I rinse my sinuses with water from my RO system. My well produces barely-drinkable water, so it takes two membrane passes to knock the minerals back. Ain't nothing getting through that, by the time it's in the product tank it's around 5ppm TDS and I have to run it through calcite to add enough solute back to drink it.

If you're really concerned a cheap single pass RO would be more than adequate for town water but make sure you have a carbon prefilter, chlorine eats up the membranes.

I don't think the risks are really significant:

Such infections are rare. Acanthamoeba affects only three to 12 people each year in the United States. But about 82 percent of the infections are fatal. About three N. fowleri infections happen in the United States each year (SN: 9/18/20).

Like it's a thing that can happen but... barely worth worrying about.

"Your part of the world" is most of the world.

In the country I grew up in, drinking directly from the tap is playing russian roulette.

You either filter the water, or boil it first before consuming it.

When I moved to a country in which tap water was drinkable, it blew my mind. Of course, it's totally normal to me nowadays.

Where I live has some of the best water in the world and I was still given this speech when I bought a neti pot