14 poisoned by ‘death cap’ mushrooms
Lethal mushrooms picked in the California wilderness poisoned 14 people late last year, with three, including an 18month-old girl, requiring liver transplants.
The 11 other patients recovered and the cases were reported to the California Poison Control System over a twoweek period in December. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the incidents Friday, when the poisonings were included in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The Amanita phalloides mushroom, known as the “death cap,” is a fungus responsible for more than 90% of the world’s mushroom-related deaths. It poses “serious public health concerns,” said the CDC, which also urged freestyle foragers to have an expert inspect their harvest before eating.
The death cap contains a toxic agent and just one mushroom can carry a fatal dosage. In many of the incidents in California, patients reported eating multiple mushrooms.
In 2016, the state noticed an uptick in wild mushroom poisonings as well as an abundance of wild mushroom growth brought on by rain and warm temperatures.
The cases involved patients picking the mushrooms for themselves or having received the mushrooms from another person. It typically took several hours for the patients to develop gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting and dehydration.
A 37-year-old man picked and ate one mushroom in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco, and felt symptoms 10 hours later. A group of five people, including the 18-month-old girl, became sick after all ate wild mushrooms picked by a stranger in the mountains.
In 2012, four people died at a Northern California senior care facility after all ate a soup made from poisonous mushrooms.
The CDC said an antidote to the death cap is licensed in most of Europe and is currently being evaluated in the U.S.
In the meantime, the agency asks people to be careful when picking and eating mushrooms. Before eating, mushrooms should first be examined, identified and reviewed by a mycologist, someone who studies fungi.