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.
Goddamn wtf mushroom people is it really worth the risk?
It’s not a risk if you know what you are doing. Then again I don’t forage for mushrooms that look like phalloides, besporigeras or marginatas. I stick with ones that are easily identifiable like Lions Mane, Oyster, Lobster, chanterelles, morels, porcinis, matsutakes and the like.
It gets you outdoors and learning your land, even if you are just observing/documenting and not collecting for food. That said, I don’t get the people that roll the dice with iffy picks or trusting roadside vendors without experience. They are crazy. Amatoxin death sounds gnarly.
You have a point with the “gets you outdoors and learning your land” thing. When I worked at a nursing home, sometimes we brought the residents into a courtyard. One of the ladies loved going around and spotting different types of mushrooms. Not to eat, just to observe. We were impressed with how many different ones we found in such a small area, which makes me wonder how many more I’d be able to see if I were to go into the nearby woods. Either way, it was a pleasant way to enjoy the outdoors, especially as this was during the Covid lockdown when we couldn’t even take day trips out of the facility.
Everyone always claims to know what they’re doing. That’s the problem. They buy a book of Amazon and then claim that that makes them an expert.
There are literally hundreds of millions of people who go mushroom hunting every year and don’t die horrifically, you only hear about these few cases specifically because they are so rare. It is a very common pastime.