Four people have died and three others have required liver transplants after eating the aptly named death cap mushroom that is proliferating in California following a rainy winter.
The California Department of Public Health is urging people to avoid mushroom foraging altogether this year because death cap mushrooms are easily confused with safe, edible varieties.
Since Nov. 18 there have been more than three dozen cases of death cap poisonings reported, including the four deaths and three liver transplants, according to the health department. Many who sought medical attention suffered from rapidly evolving acute liver injury and liver failure. Several patients required admission to an intensive care unit. They have ranged in age from 19 months to 67 years old.
The death cap is one of the most poisonous mushrooms in the world and is part of a small group of mushrooms containing amatoxins, which are highly potent compounds causing 90% of fatal mushroom poisonings globally. They are in city parks and in forests, often under oak trees.
I live in the PNW, where there are several varieties of poisonous mushrooms, including death caps. Apparently people can safely forage for mushrooms - but it scares the crap out of me because of the exact scenario in this article.
I forage mushrooms. I think there is both a healthy fear and an overreaction to how dangerous it really is. A novice can forage for something like chicken of the woods because it is an obvious species that has no deadly lookalikes. However there are mushrooms even I still avoid despite knowing exactly what they are because they have poisonous lookalikes.
What’s really surprising is people seem to think foraging plants to be safer despite there being plants with edible lookalikes like poison hemlock that can kill in minutes.
In the end, a little bit of practice, focus, and understanding safety, mushroom foraging, and plant foraging, is actually much less dangerous than one would imagine. Still, if you don’t know what you are doing you should never eat a mushroom or plant that you aren’t 100% certain is what it is. Never munch on a hunch.
Are you in the PNW? I wonder if there are safer places to forage than others.
I’m in the Northeast US. There is a lot of overlap in species but there are also a lot of differences. I wouldn’t say there is any region in the world that is safer than others. What makes it safe vs dangerous is how much time you spend learning about your region and safe practices.
I went to culinary school and they made it absolutely clear that you should never forage without an experienced mycologist with you. Or at least, never eat them before checking with one.
In this post: some very confident sounding people with very, very bad ideas about how toxic mushrooms work.
Please don’t pick and eat mushrooms in the wild unless you’ve had actual experienced people teach and train you.
Here are some facts you need to know:
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You cannot cook fungus toxins out. They are not potatoes.
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Every “obviously” safe mushroom has at least one species of look-alike that can be dangerous. You need more knowledge than a single picture in a field guide.
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You cannot taste mushroom toxins, they taste just like any other mushroom.
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A poisonous mushroom doesn’t kill you fast, it takes days or weeks for the toxins to work on your organs. These toxins can exist in a spectrum from “mild stomach ache” to “you’re doomed without several new organs very soon.” depending on what you ate and how much.
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Knowing how to identify safe mushrooms is not an identity, don’t act like people are stupid if they can’t tell as easily. There are a lot of people who don’t know how much they don’t know.
I appreciate the intent here, but overall, I don’t think it helps with the specific phrasing here.
Some mushrooms contain toxins, in fact, depending on what specific mushroom and what specific toxin it contains it can be cooked out in some cases. In fact, it is common practice to not cover wild mushrooms while cooking as the process of cooking them allows them to evaporate and leave during the process of cooking.
Some mushrooms are differentiated based on ‘tasting’ a small bit of it–in certain safe cases. But this is part of investigating and trying to find out what you are dealing with. This is one or the practices used to differentiate mushrooms taxonomically–again in some specific and known cases.
Saying “You cannot taste mushroom toxins” and that “they taste just like any other mushroom” assumes you have tasted every mushroom and have some sense of what that might taste like–it’s not something that can be taken seriously.
What damage is done when you injest a ‘poisonous mushroom’ depends on the toxin and the amount, it is utterly dependent on what specific toxin is involved, how much was injested and the specifics of the person who has injested it. Even choice edible mushrooms may cause gastrointestinal distress to somebody who has an innate allergy or is predisposed to such sensitivity. Some mushrooms contain componensts that don’t mix well with alcohol for instance–so the entirety of the meal eaten in the evening should be taken into account when preparing wild edible mushrooms.
In the case of the “Death Cap” mushroom, the consequences are well known, severe and devastating. No need to make the toxicity somehow mysterious or exotic–it’s well understood.
Again, if you are curious and want to understand more start here: https://namyco.org/
No need to continue spreading vague terminology or half-reasoned guesses.
You aren’t really providing the helpful exchange you think you are here, and you are literally personifying that final point I made there.
At this point I’m willing to admit that this applies to the both of us!
No, I kept it simple and gave broad, easy to digest guidelines for staying safe if you’re a casual browser who doesn’t know a lot. It was a well-received comment according to votes. Your comment came off contentious and pedantic and was not as well received. This is about communication not textbooks.
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Who the fuck is giving a one year old child some mushroom they found in the woods?
The Secretary of Health and Human Services, probably.
Accurate
In my country we even avoid giving mushrooms we know are safe, nearly impossible to harvest incorrectly, to children under 4 because they may be hard on the digestive system.
So unsettling that some mushrooms are delicious in a risotto or omelette and others will fucking murder you.
All of those involved in this were people who used to forage in their respective home countries. They knew regional edible species before moving to California, as a result they identified what they thought was edible, but as it happens was deadly poisonous.
Please don’t come away with the opinion that you cannot identify mushrooms or that the process is somehow mysterious, that’s not the case. If you are considering getting into mushroom identification, please get in touch with your local mycological society: https://namyco.org/ as they are an excellent resource and it’s a whole lot of fun. Don’t rely on anyting a “AI” will provide you, either forward or backward. Don’t ever just guess or YOLO it. When in doubt, throw it out.
Articles like this come out every time these unfortunate events occur, and since mushrooms are culturally stigmatized, the facts of the events are brushed over and uneducated attitudes and stigmas are spread and continue fester–which is a shame as it provoakes a very fearful attitude towards mushrooms in general.
Are these linked to “AI identification”?
Not likely, all the victims were migrants who had a practice of forraging where they grew up natively. I’ve read about cases like this across the country on either coast of the US.
However, there seems to be a spike, either due to the rains in California or perhaps another reason–not going to go as far as plaming ‘AI’ identification. I certainly wouldn’t trust “AI” to do that job.
The California health department is providing video and documentation in order to help people identify the “Death Cap” mushroom in multiple languages:
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/EHIB/Pages/EIS/Poisonous-Mushrooms.aspx
None are ICE goons. I checked.
They only eat McDonald’s.
There are old mushroom hunters and there are are bold mushroom hunters. There are very, very few old, bold mushroom hunters. There are only a few deadly mushrooms so why not aquatint yourself with them before eating them, and dying?
Please educate yourself extremely well if you plan on eating wild mushrooms
They must be pretty tasty?
what happens when drugs are illegal
what happens when you don’t read the article
It’s verdant banana. They often come into the comments with bad or straight up ignorant takes. I often see them at the bottom showered in negative downvotes.
I think I’ve said this before; I’d block them, but it’s actually pretty entertaining to see someone who is so consistently wrong
