Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

cleveland.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 311 posts

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#151

Post by junglistguy »

masswerk wrote: post #110
KerrAvon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curiosity: do you find that you (at 30+ years) are so good at identification in the wild that you don’t find any “bad” specimens once you get them home, or do you still catch some outliers where you needed to look at them more closely? Or does the process involve taking them home for closer examination?

"Old school" foragers typically stick to a few mushrooms to be safe. Meaning, they have quite an expertise on 3 or 4 kinds of mushrooms (or, even more likely, just a couple of them) and are staying away from anything else, especially, if there is a similar, poisonous mushroom. (At least, this is what all I happen to know are doing.) Also, if you aren't 100% confident, stay away from it. (And there is the real problem…

rather 20-30 but I live in europe, in america you are different kind of human :D

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#153

Post by londons_explore »

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…

Safety certifications tend to be blanket 'this thing is safe to treat this disease' things.

Whereas they should be 'in the last 10 years, 100 people were treated with this drug and 27% survived. 71 were not treated with the drug and 1% survived. You use your professional judgement to decide if it is suitable for your patient'.

The FDA shouldn't be doing blanket approvals or bans. They should be making the information available for medical professionals to make the decision themselves.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#155

Post by varajelle »

masswerk wrote: post #110
KerrAvon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curiosity: do you find that you (at 30+ years) are so good at identification in the wild that you don’t find any “bad” specimens once you get them home, or do you still catch some outliers where you needed to look at them more closely? Or does the process involve taking them home for closer examination?

"Old school" foragers typically stick to a few mushrooms to be safe. Meaning, they have quite an expertise on 3 or 4 kinds of mushrooms (or, even more likely, just a couple of them) and are staying away from anything else, especially, if there is a similar, poisonous mushroom. (At least, this is what all I happen to know are doing.) Also, if you aren't 100% confident, stay away from it. (And there is the real problem…

When I was younger I would go foraging and I would indeed stick to just the few species of very common mushroom that grew in the woods near me, that I could recognise for sure, with very distinct characteristics.

Then I moved to another city just a few hundreds of km away, and I couldn't collect many mushrooms anymore. The mushrooms variaties were quite different. The ones I could recognise were not so common anymore, and I didn't know the other ones. I stopped foraging now, because I don't have the urge to learn mushrooms again.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#156

Post by jmcgough »

londons_explore wrote: post #153
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…

Safety certifications tend to be blanket 'this thing is safe to treat this disease' things. Whereas they should be 'in the last 10 years, 100 people were treated with this drug and 27% survived. 71 were not treated with the drug and 1% survived. You use your professional judgement to decide if it is suitable for your patient'. The FDA shouldn't be doing blanket approvals or bans. They should be making the information…

FDA approvals aren't based on absolute safety, they're based on a risk/reward analysis.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#157

Post by AngryData »

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

Yeah that seems like a huge oversight. Every mushroom field guide book ive seen very specifically called out any potential look-a-likes for edible mushrooms and gave extra warning on mushrooms that are particularly difficult to positively identify.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#158

Post by malermeister »

ncann wrote: post #103
dmitrybrant wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I don't recall the last time I've ever accidentally picked up a poisonous specimen along with the good ones I was intending to pick. At this point it's such second-nature that telling apart an edible vs. poisonous mushroom is like telling a bottle of milk from a bottle of Drano. And yet I still examine each one at home before putting it in the pot. The other thing is that the truly deadly varieties, such…

I think I read somewhere before about how if a mushroom is white, then stay away from it. How true is this from your experience?

The parasol mushroom [1] is one of the most popular foraged mushrooms in my part of the world and is white-ish.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrolepiota_procera

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#159

Post by AngryData »

changoplatanero wrote: post #2

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

Many people just stick to the very easily identified mushrooms with few or no real look-a-likes or atleast mushrooms who's poisonous look-a-likes aren't that deadly but just make you feel shitty.

Morels are super popular around me because they are very easy to identify and false morels aren't very hard to differentiate once you have seen true morels a couple times. They may look similar to someone who has never seen or picked morels before, but they have very distinct differences once you know what to look for.

At the very least someone should learn what the extremely deadly mushrooms, like death caps or destroying angels, look like so they know what to most definitely avoid. Especially with the delayed reactions which might prevent them from connecting their illness with the mushrooms they ate a day or two before.

A good field guide will specifically call out similar but deadly mushrooms when referencing edible mushrooms and are very clear on the dangers of misidentification and the minimum neccessary identification required. Some mushrooms require a microscrope, but many others just require you to identify certain distinguishing features.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#160

Post by 331c8c71 »

tptacek wrote: post #38
chrisgd wrote: post #16

Why do people like eating mushrooms from the woods? How much of it is the potential risk? There are plenty of options at the grocery store.

There are mushrooms you effectively can't get at the grocery store. Morels are probably the best example.

You can buy them in a supermarket in Europe (where I live)
Post reply on HN