Posted on 09/05/2008 6:00:59 PM PDT by Coleus
Three Somerset County residents have learned firsthand the dangers of picking and eating wild mushrooms. The trio from Franklin Township have been hospitalized with liver toxicity; one is in critical condition and may need a transplant. Bruce Ruck, director of drug information and professional education at the New Jersey Poison Control Center in Newark, identified the victims as a mother and her daughter and son-in-law, all Asian Indians. The mother is in critical condition and being evaluated for a liver transplant at University Hospital in Newark; the other two are at Princeton University Medical Center.
"They picked and ate wild mushrooms and wound up with liver toxicity," Ruck said. Officials from the poison center have been unable to interview the mother and are uncertain where or when the mushrooms were picked, Ruck said. All three victims, however, fell ill within the past two days, he said. Ruck said poisonous mushrooms often are indistinguishable from edible varieties, especially to an untrained eye.
"At this time of the year, people see mushrooms growing on the lawn or on the side of the road and they think they can eat them, but they can't," he said. "You can have two mushrooms growing side by side and people think they're the same mushroom, but they're not." Immigrants can be especially susceptible, he said, if they are accustomed to picking and eating wild mushrooms in their native countries. "Because the mushroom may look like something they ate at one time, they think it's the same mushroom, but it's not," Ruck said. "The bottom line is we just don't want people picking and eating wild mushrooms."
But Peter Kothari, a leader in New Jersey's Indo-American community, said Indians have no particular propensity to pick and eat wild mushrooms in their homeland.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
This happens with an inordinate number of the victims being Asian. I've heard that there are no poisonous mushrooms in Asia posited as a reason, but don't know for sure. Ate some once ...God-awful nausea and puking was as bad as it got for me.
this would never happen to hobbits.. healing beams from Los Angeles.
boy, i don’t think i would trust myself to pick the right ones!
you have to be an expert in that area.
One of my fondest memories of my Grampa is mushroonm hunting with him in the old World’s Fairgrounds in NYC.
The sooner they all get immobilized by mushrooms, paralyzed by rattlesnakes, etc. and eaten by cougar, wolf or bear, the better I would like it.
The trouble is, we use up a bunch of tax dollars attempting to rescue these idiots from their own poisoned brains.
Why d’you think they’re called ‘wild’?
Maybe it depends upon the type of mycotoxins involved but milk thistle has reversed the liver damage done by the most poisonous of all mushrooms the Death Cap (Amanita phalloides.) I hope these docs are aware of it.
We took a mushroom foraging course given by some experts ... upshot of the learning we took away was, we would never, ever eat mushrooms we picked ourselves in the wild. Too risky!
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