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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

#211

Post by nelgaard »

duskwuff wrote: post #123
dmitrybrant wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cultural knowledge passed down through generations. Mushroom foraging is super popular in Russia and other Slavic countries, and my grandmother taught me most of the fundamentals before we immigrated to the US, and I continued to study field guide books on my own. When you get to know the specific bits of anatomy of the mushroom body, the trees with which they're symbiotic, the seasons in which they occur, etc.,…

Incidentally, I've heard that a significant number of people get poisoned by mushrooms when they learned to recognize edible mushrooms in another country (often China or Eastern Europe), then move to the US and try to forage for mushrooms here. Knowing one region's edible/poisonous mushrooms doesn't make you an expert on anything outside that region.

It it worse than not being an expert on local mushrooms. You can get fooled because you can find mushrooms that resembles mushroom from you home region, that you know to be edible.

E.g: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvopluteus_gloiocephalus#Edi... == In the United States, there have been several cases of Asian immigrants collecting and eating death caps (Amanita phalloides), under the mistaken assumption that they were Volvariella. ==

That has also happened here in Denmark.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#212

Post by Matticus_Rex »

dmitrybrant wrote: post #96
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?

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…

Amanita sec caesarae doesn't require spore prints or microscopy to be affirmatively ID'd as safe. You have to check for the presence of a few characteristics, but it's a fairly safe ID for experienced foragers. Blushers and grisettes, however... I've seen too many people in mushroom groups misidentify those to ever recommend them to others.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#213

Post by csydas »

SpikeDad wrote: post #13
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.

Wow. Who would take the liability of an app such as this? Regardless of how many disclaimers you'd have to agree to I could easily see a jury holding the creator of the app liable for a horrible death like that.

I dunno, watching the video linked by this use [0], I think the apps (aside from Google Lens) do a fairly okay job of being clear that they aren't as sure on their identification and that they're about casualness, not "safe to eat or not safe to eat."

While the article cites some persons who ate poisonous mushrooms because an app said they weren't poisonous, ultimately it will come down to "Did the app sell itself as telling you what's safe to eat and what's not?"

From the video, I'm particularly harsh towards Google on this as it doesn't seem to include the confidence level or analysis process and instead focused on showing a result and even trying to sell you something based on the result. This does seem like it's the wrong approach that will get people killed, with thoughts like "well Google thinks it's this, and it's even trying to sell me some, so must be okay."

For the others, you can see warnings in the apps about eating identified stuff, you can see how confident it is in the analysis, and they at least appear to be considering things like the region you're in when making an analysis.

I think it would be fairly defensible based on the warnings and preparation that a reasonable person would not be expected to take the identification as a go-ahead to eat something. That unreasonable persons take unreasonable actions as a result of these apps wouldn't really change the legal interpretation, but of course maybe it can be persuasive in other directions.

At first I shared the same opinion as you that these are dangerous apps, but watching what the apps do in the linked video, the non-google ones are actually pretty acceptable in my opinion. I would prefer they include a few more warnings though when there is low confidence matching or when there is conflicting matching just to remind the person using the app "hey, btw, a lot of plants can kill you. Don't eat this, I'm just an app."

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33220688

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#214

Post by Matticus_Rex »

trhr wrote: post #196
dmitrybrant wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using that rule of thumb, you would successfully avoid Amanita virosa (destroying angel), but you could still get poisoned by Amanita phalloides (death cap) which has a pale-green cap. I don't endorse any rules-of-thumb for foraging, but a much better differentiator for beginners is whether the mushroom has pores vs. gills under the cap. There are virtually no deadly varieties that have pores.

> There are virtually no deadly varieties that have pores. Never heard this one before. Adding it to my bug out notes. Thanks!

Note that there's at least one, and that a number of them will still make you sick.

Put a few common pored edibles (Laetiporus sp., Cantharellus sp., Grifola frondosa, etc.) in your notes for sure though, with basic descriptions, as even their few remote lookalikes (at least pored ones -- some people think Omphalotus sp. look like Cantharellus for some reason) are just going to give you a moderate stomach upset at worst, and may be edible themselves.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#215

Post by Matticus_Rex »

yieldcrv wrote: post #199
dmitrybrant wrote: post #69

I've been foraging mushrooms for 30+ years, and I triple-check every single specimen before cooking it. The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid. I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?)…

> The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid. Out of curiosity, have you used any of the apps? They're really good at flora, and include identification of fungi because they are outdoors and attached to soil and flora. They greatly amplify the most passive and casual interest to something far beyond the tools employed professionals would have. E…

I've used the apps for both flora and mushrooms, and they're much worse at mushroom identification. I always tell beginners to, at most, use an app to figure out where in an ID book to start looking.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#216

Post by Matticus_Rex »

pctrsq0perenl wrote: post #172

Foraging and telling apart edible mushrooms from the non-edible ones seems like a nice hobby to have. Are there any good reliable books that I can read to get started?

Almost definitely, but which one depends on where you live since species vary so drastically from place to place. The best way to find out is to look for a Facebook group for foraging in your state or city and ask which books are best for there. Many areas also have good beginner programs or events that teach some basics of a few easy edibles that have no toxic lookalikes.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#217

Post by Matticus_Rex »

pfdietz wrote: post #66
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.

I know, right? What's the upside? Possibly interesting flavor. What's the downside. AGONY AND DEATH. Why is this even a question?

There's no risk of agony and death from foraging many edible species. If I'm foraging big orange pored shelf mushrooms, for example, my risk of death is zero. This is like saying "what's the upside of drugs when some of them kill you?!"

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#218

Post by Matticus_Rex »

allisdust wrote: post #138

I never understood why people don't just eat store bought mushrooms. Why risk liver failure and other serious health complications not to mention countless hours of hospital time over something as trivial as eating wild mushrooms. Why not teach in school explicitly to not eat wild mushrooms and may be teach how to farm safe varieties if someone desperately needs to eat their own picked ones.

It's trivially easy to avoid toxic species, though. If you put in a tiny amount of effort into learning and limit yourself to thinks without toxic lookalikes (or put in more effort into learning), you are not risking liver failure and hospital time.

Re: A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio

#219

Post by Matticus_Rex »

yosito wrote: post #119
anm89 wrote: post #90

I think this gives people the wrong impression that mushroom foraging is dangerous. It isn't. Anyone can quickly learn to identify the safe edible species around them. But the key is, you have to understand that you should know upfront what species around you, in your current season, are edible and eat only exactly those species. For example, almost anyone can learn to identify chicken of the woods, morels, oysters,…

> the key is, you have to understand that you should know upfront what species around you, in your current season, are edible and eat only exactly those species This is missing a very important factor, which is that there are some edible species with highly toxic lookalikes. These lookalikes are quite common in Ohio, hence why poisonings from misidentified mushrooms are also common.

Which Ohio edibles have highly toxic lookalikes?

There are two, but I'm guessing you're not basing this off of actual knowledge. If you avoid those two, you can forage dozens of other edibles easily. It's not hard to avoid those two (and their entire genus, though there are some easily-distinguished edibles in the genus as well).

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