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.
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.
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.