3rd person dies from wild mushroom poisoning at Northern California senior care facility

[cali]

LOOMIS, Calif. — A third person has died from eating toxic mushrooms at a California senior care facility, authorities said Wednesday.

The person, whose name was not released, died on Saturday, state Department of Social Services spokesman Oscar Ramirez told The Associated Press.

<snip>

The caretaker who prepared the soup, who was among those sickened, apparently picked the mushrooms from the backyard of the six-bed care facility and did not know they were poisonous.

Investigators were quickly able to pinpoint the soup as the source of the poisonings because the only person living at the home who did not eat dinner that night did not fall ill, authorities have said.

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/3rd-person-dies-from-wild-mushroom-poisoning-at-northern-california-senior-care-facility/2012/11/21/88df691a-341a-11e2-92f0-496af208bf23_story.html

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. don't EVER pick mushrooms for food unless you have a Ph.D. in Mushroom_ology

seriously

[Cleita]

3. Definitely wild mushrooms.

Sometimes, I'm even wary of the cultivated ones you buy in the store. I really wish there were labeling laws that tell you exactly which farm they were grown on just to keep the growers honest.

[cali]

4. Mycology and you are so right. You really need to know what you're doing.

[catbyte]

5. There are only 2 kinds of wild mushrooms I will eat--morels & fairy rings

And with fairy rings, never, ever eat a mushroom that doesn't have tan gills! Oh I do eat puffballs if they're small enough but like with fairy rings avoid golf courses etc that might dump chemicals on grass. My dad was a mushroom expert and he would bring shrooms home I would never trust myself to pick.

[loli phabay]

19. puffballs are good so are the bracket fungi on the trees.

[XemaSab]

20. Puffballs are the ones that will get you

A baby amanita looks just like a puffball. For real.

[catbyte]

23. I never pick them unless there are large ones near. they have a distinct odor too

I don't know if we have Amanitas in Michigan, but I am very careful with mushrooms.

[Major Nikon]

13. It's not that hard to tell the difference if you know what you are doing

It's just that the consequences from fucking up can be quite high. There's lots of amateur wild mushroom hunters out there who have no problems whatsoever.

[opiate69]

15. I was supposed to start mushroom hunting this fall..

My friend has been a master forager for i think 30 years..but it looks like the season isn`t turning out.

[Major Nikon]

16. I've been with some help

It's not something I'm prepared to do on my own, but I don't think it would be that hard to learn. There are field guides which help with identification, but it doesn't strike me as something you can just learn from a book.

[opiate69]

37. Oh yeah...

I won't even so much as touch a wild mushroom unless Neal's with me saying it's good to go lol.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Oh, how awful.

This is so very sad...

[Scuba]

6. The only wild mushrooms I'll eat are morels. They're unmistakable...

[closeupready]

8. In France, they sell all kinds of fungi fresh in street

markets all over the city (Paris, Lyons, other cities). Fresh morels are just delicious.

Some of them are scary looking, orange or weird shapes, but even though they sell lots of them at the markets, not sure that they have much of a problem with food poisoning such as in the opening story here.

[oldhippydude]

10. yes French are noted for their loose morels

[closeupready]

11. Oh yeah? Well a chanterelle walks into a bar, sits down and orders a drink.

The bartender says, "We don't serve mushrooms here." The mushroom says, "Why not?! I'm a fun guy!"

[tabasco]

26. Good one. n/t

[Major Nikon]

14. False morels

http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/false-morels

[Scuba]

17. Looks nothing like a real morel.

[Major Nikon]

18. Better pictures

[Scuba]

21. The bottom pic is a morel; the top pic is something else....

... but it's easy to see how they could be confused.

[Major Nikon]

22. It's that way with many different types of mushrooms

If you know what to look for, indentifying the good from the bad isn't all that difficult. If you don't know what to look for, you wind up killing old people.

[catbyte]

33. I grew up eating false morels too and never got sick. Quite different, cap separate &

stem has white cottony stuff inside. Never saw much difference between those & true morels. They taste the same too. True morels have a meatier texture. I was shocked when I read they were supposed to be poisonous.


Maybe Indians are immune?!?

[Major Nikon]

38. Lots of people seem to be eating them with few detrimental effects

Some of that seems to be related to tolerance and preparation, but their toxins don't appear to be completely removeable and they can kill you.

[Berserker]

29. I love morels too BUT

there is a variety that is not hollow but solid inside and very slimy that look like morels. They are called false morels. But as a mushroom hunter they are easily detectible if you know what to look for.
[IMG][/IMG]

[catbyte]

34. That looks like what my folks called a Beefsteak mushroom. Rarer than morels. Yum!

I don't recall that white stem tho. What my folks picked was essentially stemless.

[Odin2005]

35. Morels are Minnesota's state fungus!

[Scuba]

40. Great choice, like Wellstone or Franken!!! False morels would be Bachmann.

[backscatter712]

7. All mushrooms are edible. Some only once. n/t

[oldhippydude]

9. tha'ts enough to anamtia myscaria

[HopeHoops]

12. Even experienced mushroom hunters die from eating the wrong kind.

EVERY edible mushroom has a look-alike that's poisonous. The only way to tell is by taking a spore print. Curiously, the opposite is NOT true. There's no edible look-alike for a destroying angel. One lick of a destroying angel will likely knock out your liver and kidneys. DAMN are they pretty though - I actually saw one in the woods illuminated by a sun beam. I know how it got its name now.

Even the psychotropic mushrooms have poisonous (deadly) look-alike equivalents. Still, the "Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms" lists the psychotropics as poisonous. Symptoms include visions, hilarity, unmotivated laughter, etc. and ends with "The victim should be assured that the symptoms will pass."

[Earth_First]

25. "The victim should be assured that the symptoms will pass."

I've told myself this many late nights at a concert or two...

[HopeHoops]

30. I only did mushrooms once. It was weird, but yes, the symptoms did pass.

[HereSince1628]

31. There are old mushroom hunters, and bold mushroom hunters but there are no

old bold mushroom hunters.

[HopeHoops]

32. I've heard that before and it's true. Mushroom toxins go straight for vital organs.

It's weird, I know, but they strike directly at the most vital organs. There's no cure. BOOM! You're dead.

[JaneyVee]

24. Bleeding Tooth fungus

Looks delicious, tastes like death.

[catbyte]

36. I wouldn't go near that thing, lol

[DiverDave]

42. That looks like something from

an alien planet.
I expect eyelids to close over the red 'eyes'.
I'm gonna have nightmares about these things...

[ElboRuum]

27. Why would anyone even THINK of doing this?

"apparently picked the mushrooms from the backyard of the six-bed care facility and did not know they were poisonous"

Yes, because it is very difficult for a person untrained at identifying wild mushroom species to know which ones are poisonous and which are not. Many edible varieties bear striking similarity to poisonous ones and unless you know what you're looking for, you can easily poison yourself.

[Retrograde]

39. I've found mushrooms in my yard that I was 95% sure were chantrelles

but I didn't eat them because of that nagging 5% chance they were something else entirely.

My father's uncle - raised in Poland - like wild mushrooms, and when he was in his 70s used to have me scramble under the trees to fetch the Amanitas. He showed me some of the subtle differences between the edible and poisonous kind, but I was never confident enough to try them on my own, and that was on the other side of the continent anyway.

[DiverDave]

41. These where the only shrooms I would pick myself

And consume.
They grew all over the cow pastures in the Willamette valley.
We had a few FARRRRRR out parties on these little morsels







I will echo everyone else here, DONT eat mushrooms you cannot identify as safe, even if they "look sorta like" the one in the book in your hand.
Make DAMNED sure before you eat them.