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A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

cleveland.com

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Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#51

Post by lazide »

voisin wrote: post #7
kornhole wrote: post #3

It is fall and mushroom picking time! Here is my simple advice: The first mushrooms you should get to know in your area are the deadly ones. When you find a mushroom that looks like an edible one, temper your enthusiasm and be realistic. Mistakes are made when people really want to find an edible one. If it definitely doesn't look like a deadly one and might be the edible you identify, first try a small amount and se…

I read advice once that if you were lost in the woods and didn’t know what might be poisonous, rub it on your arm and wait. If no reaction after 15 minutes, rub it on the inside of your lips lightly. If no reaction after 15 minutes, eat a very small amount, and if no reaction within a number of hours, you’re good to go. No idea if this is accurate but it seems reasonable.

How long would you need to be lost before you'd try this advice, personally?

A few hours? A few days? A few weeks?

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#52

Post by DangitBobby »

smegsicle wrote: post #25
neilv wrote: post #11

> When the app matched his photos of the backyard mushrooms with an edible species, [...] it almost killed him. Now there's an app that'd have to be designed very conscientiously.

a mushroom identification app that doesn't draw attention to toxic lookalikes sounds pretty close to criminally negligent

And this is why we can't have nice things. This opinion is wild to me. You do not trust a consumer app with life and death decisions, especially over something where the potential upside is getting to eat a mushroom you found and the potential downside is death. Making more criminals is not the answer.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#53

Post by mordechai9000 »

aGHz wrote: post #47

Several comments here advise getting a good mushroom identification book instead of relying on plant id apps for foraging. Do you have any recommendations? And more generally, how would you go about assessing the trustworthiness of any such book?

Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora

Edit: this is the definitive resource for serious amateur mushroom enthusiasts in North America. It has a wealth of information on understanding the identifying characteristics of mushrooms, as well as keys to aid in the identification of many common genera and species. It's one of those books I find entertaining just to open and read at random. YMMV.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#54

Post by JKCalhoun »

photochemsyn wrote: post #49
9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote: post #9

Perhaps the key point of this news story: ’But unbeknownst to many, Ohio is home to some of the world’s deadliest mushrooms -- and they can look a whole lot like their edible cousins. A recent rash of nearly lethal poisonings have experts worried that mobile naturalist apps may be lulling otherwise cautious citizens into a false sense of security ‘

I find it hard to imagine anyone relying on an app to determine whether or not a wild mushroom is edible or not. The poisonous mushrooms (particularly the widely distributed and complex Amanita types) have some of the most insidious biological toxins known, in particular alpha-amanitin, which has a really nasty delayed-action effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%91-Amanitin It's mode of action is so unique (bind…

I couldn't write/ship an app like that.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#55

Post by [deleted] »

chernofool wrote: post #21
voisin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read advice once that if you were lost in the woods and didn’t know what might be poisonous, rub it on your arm and wait. If no reaction after 15 minutes, rub it on the inside of your lips lightly. If no reaction after 15 minutes, eat a very small amount, and if no reaction within a number of hours, you’re good to go. No idea if this is accurate but it seems reasonable.

Bad idea for mushrooms. Some of them are insidious - you could feel fine for several hours while your liver is destroyed, and by the time you feel sick it's too late to do anything.

[deleted]

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#57

Post by [deleted] »

DangitBobby wrote: post #52
smegsicle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a mushroom identification app that doesn't draw attention to toxic lookalikes sounds pretty close to criminally negligent

And this is why we can't have nice things. This opinion is wild to me. You do not trust a consumer app with life and death decisions, especially over something where the potential upside is getting to eat a mushroom you found and the potential downside is death. Making more criminals is not the answer.

[deleted]

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#58

Post by colechristensen »

nkurz wrote: post #44

Since no one has done it yet, I'll ask the obvious question about the FDA: how many people die or need a liver transplant each year because the FDA is being unreasonable here? Here's some quotes from the article: Approximately 40% of people who ingest the deadly Amanita mushrooms die or require a liver transplant, according to Dr. Pierre Gholam, the liver specialist at University Hospitals who treated Hickman. ... Th…

Couldn’t the patient just take a bunch of the milk thistle supplements available at most pharmacies?

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#59

Post by JKCalhoun »

antx wrote: post #4
changoplatanero wrote: post #2

Mushroom foraging sounds really fun but I’m too scared to eat anything that I find.

There's no wiggle room. You need to be 1000% certain of identification, if you decide to eat a mushroom. That's how I've been doing it for the last decade. I forage a lot of mushrooms, but don't consume anything I'm not sure of. Also, there are "beginner" mushrooms, that don't have any dangerous look-alikes, such as the famous "chicken of the woods" (laetiporus sulphureus). You can't really go wrong with mushroom lik…

Ha ha, more like "pancakes of the woods" [1]. I'll have to keep my eye out for them.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=laetiporus+sulphureus&client...

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#60

Post by voisin »

lazide wrote: post #51
voisin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read advice once that if you were lost in the woods and didn’t know what might be poisonous, rub it on your arm and wait. If no reaction after 15 minutes, rub it on the inside of your lips lightly. If no reaction after 15 minutes, eat a very small amount, and if no reaction within a number of hours, you’re good to go. No idea if this is accurate but it seems reasonable.

How long would you need to be lost before you'd try this advice, personally? A few hours? A few days? A few weeks?

Like others mentioned, I wouldn’t try it with mushrooms as they aren’t that nutritionally dense relative to the risks. But for plants, I’d do it as soon as I felt the need to eat something. See Into the Wild for an example of a guy whose life it could’ve saved.
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