California health officials are begging residents to stop treating the woods like an all-you-can-eat salad bar. After 21 confirmed cases of toxic mushroom poisoning, including one death, the state is desperately urging people to quit foraging until further notice.
If you want mushrooms, buy the less adventurous kind at the grocery store. They will not kill your organs.
NPR reports that the primary killer here is the appropriately named death cap mushroom. It’s responsible for over 90 percent of mushroom-related fatalities worldwide. The California Department of Health says the recent spike hit sometime between mid-November and this past Friday.
There were “significant clusters” in the Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas. That’s where rain and humidity meet in Northern California forests to create mushrooms, thereby creating a culture of mushroom foraging.
Victims include both children and adults. Some even required extended stints in intensive care. At least one person may need a liver transplant.
California Wants You to Buy Grocery Store Mushrooms, Not Forage Potentially Toxic Ones
Death caps flourish under oak, pine, and other hardwood trees. This is especially true after the heavy rains of fall and winter, which is precisely the kind of rainy season California has had so far.
Mushroom populations are exploding statewide because of it. The foragers are out in full force, and their inexperience is showing. To be fair, death caps can be deceiving. To the untrained eye, they can look like any old run-of-the-mill grocery store mushroom.
They smell like a mushroom should, and they taste just fine when cooked into a meal. It won’t be until about 6 to 15 hours later, when the violent vomiting and organ failure start settling in, that you realize you’ve made a colossal mistake.
Death caps are not native to California. They arrived in the 1930s via imported Oakwood trees. They took a liking to the weather and conditions and quickly spread across North America and even Australia. They blend well into urban and suburban areas, cropping up in places easily accessible to pets looking for a snack or humans looking for a naturally grown treat.
Nothing about their looks screams poisonous, but their toxin, α-Amanitin, can trigger irreversible liver, kidney, heart, and muscle damage. There is no antidote for the toxin, and most treatments out there are more about controlling symptoms than about purging the toxin from your system or negating its most damaging effects.
There is some early research hinting at a potential antidote down the line, but it is still far from reality. Hence, California officials are doing everything just short of physically holding people who gotta get them shrooms.
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