Eleven people were hospitalized after eating wild and apparently toxic mushrooms on Friday night, a fire agency that serves Pennsylvania Dutch Country said.
The patients in Peach Bottom Township included a man, a woman, and nine children who were treated at a hospital and released, according to NBC affiliate WGAL of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
The township is in Dutch Country, which overlaps with Amish Country and shares culture and history, about 80 miles west of Philadelphia on Pennsylvania’s border with Maryland.
The station reported that family members foraged wild mushrooms and ate them that night.
WGAL reported that a family member had to walk a half-mile to find a public phone to dial 911. The Amish generally disallow cellphones and other contemporary devices and technology.
Emergency medical personnel arrived at the location after 9:30 p.m. Friday and helped transport all 11 patients, according to a statement from Delta-Cardiff Volunteer Fire Company Station 57.
Because so many people were ill, the situation was designated a “mass casualty incident,” the agency said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says eating mushrooms foraged outdoors should almost never be done except by trained experts known as mycologists.
Most of the known mushroom poisonings and deaths in the United States involve foraging of amanita phalloides mushrooms, known as “death caps,” in the wild, the CDC said in a report on the toxic fungi.
Eating them can cause death as well as abdominal discomfort, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration and liver damage, the CDC said.
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