Can you get a brain-eating amoeba from tap water?

Brain-eating-amoeba infections are extremely rare, but when they do strike, they are almost always deadly, killing around 97% of victims. 

Such infections are caused by free-living amoebas, such as Naegleria fowleri, which usually lives in soil and warm fresh water, such as lakes, ponds and hot springs. 

If water contaminated with N. fowleri gets into the nose — for example, when someone dives or jumps into water — these amoebas can travel via the olfactory nerve to the brain. There, they begin destroying brain tissue, triggering inflammation that can cause a condition called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM). Patients with PAM normally end up in a coma and die within five days after their symptoms begin.

Related: Rare 'brain-eating' amoeba infection behind death of 2-year-old in Nevada

But can you acquire a brain-eating-amoeba infection from tap water? 

The short answer is no — assuming the tap water is properly disinfected.

"Tap water is an almost-unheard-of source of these infections," Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee, told Live Science. That's because conventional tap water from your city or community water supply is usually filtered and treated with chlorine, he said. Indeed, one part per million of free chlorine is enough to kill 99.9% of the amoebas in water within nine minutes.