""These cases often occur in communities that may be immigrant, may not speak English, and have experience foraging for mushrooms in another country," said Craig Smollin, UCSF emergency physician and medical director of the San Francisco division of the California Poison Control System, adding that patients from this outbreak are from Mexico, Guatemala, and China. "It's very easy to confuse a poisonous mushroom for an edible mushroom. That's a very easy mistake to make.""
""After the first rains of the year, two Decembers ago, Noe and his brothers went hiking in the hills of Santa Rosa and found some mushrooms. They fried them up that evening and kicked back a few beers. This fall, warm temperatures and early rains fueled what fungi experts are calling a "super bloom" of poisonous mushrooms known as death caps in California.""
Warm temperatures and early rains triggered an unusually large emergence of death cap mushrooms across California. Twenty-four people fell ill, with 18 hospitalized for more than a week, two requiring liver transplants, and one fatality. State health officials issued warnings advising people to stop foraging for the remainder of the rainy season. Affected patients include immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and China, reflecting communities with prior foraging experience. Poisonous death caps can be easily mistaken for edible mushrooms. Parks prohibit foraging in some areas, and educational efforts aim to raise awareness about risks and proper identification.
Read at Kqed
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