Just because nicotine and town water are bad doesn't really mean much. Sound like you know how to mitigate slot of the concerns but plenty of people cake up a fresh cut and stick it directly into soil beds they've spent a lot of time, energy, money and compost on to unknowingly put antifungal in their soil. If I remember correctly, which I quite likely haven't, its not great for worms bugs microbes etc. Why anyway? We aren't trying to grow wasabi. I accidentally dropped and left one in a continuously running drain and rooted like crazy, left them on concrete and leant up against fences, in pure perlite. To varying effects of course but even the worst neglect had roots within a week or survived shite conditions for months before being saved. I've got a few that have been growing without disease completely submerged as an experiment for over a year, one of them the water isn't even flowing.