Body
Death cap mushrooms have sickened dozens of people in California since the state began receiving reports in mid-November, with four deaths and three liver transplants among the cases, the California Department of Public Health said. The department said the jump followed a rainy winter and urged people to skip mushroom foraging this year because death caps are easily mistaken for edible varieties.
Officials said the state had received reports of more than three dozen death cap poisonings since Nov. 18, including the four deaths and three people who needed liver transplants. Many patients, the department said, developed rapidly evolving acute liver injury and liver failure, with several requiring intensive care. The patients ranged in age from 19 months to 67 years old.
Dr. Craig Smollin, medical director for the San Francisco Division of the California Poison Control System, said the scale of this year’s poisonings is out of the ordinary. In a statement carried by the Associated Press, Smollin said, “The main thing this year is just the magnitude, the number of people ingesting this mushroom,” adding that “Having almost 40 is very unusual.”
Smollin said that in a typical year there are between two and five death cap poisonings. He and other experts also pointed to weather patterns this season, saying warm fall temperatures combined with early rains are contributing to what they described as a “super bloom” of death caps in California.
California officials said they received cases tied to mushrooms found in city parks and forests, often under oak trees. They also said clusters have been identified in the Monterey area and in the San Francisco Bay area, and warned that death cap mushrooms resemble many other fungi that are safe to eat.
The public health department urged people not to forage for mushrooms and emphasized that a mushroom’s color is not a reliable indicator of toxicity. Officials also said that whether a death cap is eaten raw, dried or cooked does not make it safer.
The Associated Press reported one case from Salinas involving Laura Marcelino, who told the San Francisco Chronicle that her family gathered mushrooms that looked similar to ones she and her husband used to forage in Oaxaca, Mexico. Marcelino, 36, said her husband became dizzy and tired the next day, and both adults developed vomiting and other illness, prompting hospitalization for Marcelino and a liver transplant for her husband.
Officials said people can develop stomach cramping, nausea, diarrhea or vomiting within 24 hours after ingesting a toxic mushroom, and that symptoms can worsen quickly after that. They also said early symptoms may go away within a day, but serious to fatal liver damage can still develop within two to three days, making treatment most effective when people seek medical care soon after they suspect a poisonous mushroom.
Children have been among those poisoned, the department said, and it advised supervising children and pets where mushrooms grow. Officials also recommended buying mushrooms only from trusted grocery stores and sellers, and said treatment is more difficult once symptoms begin.
Separately, U.S. Poison Centers told the Associated Press in an email that it has seen an increase in exposures of all mushroom varieties, not only death caps, from September through January by 40% compared with the same period the previous year. The poison centers noted that exposures do not always result in illness or poisoning, and they said emergency callers can reach U.S. Poison Centers at 1-800-222-1222 or via PoisonHelp.org.