SAN DIEGO — At least three people have died and three others have needed liver transplants after eating the aptly named Death Cap mushroom that spreads in California after a rainy winter.
The California Department of Public Health is urging people to avoid foraging for mushrooms altogether this year because it’s easy to confuse Death Cap mushrooms with safe, edible varieties.
Since November 18, at least three dozen cases of mushroom poisoning have been reported, according to the health department. Many of those who sought medical care suffered from severe liver injury and rapidly progressing liver failure. Many patients require admission to the intensive care unit. Their ages ranged from 19 months to 67 years.
“This greatly exceeds the typical report of fewer than five mushroom poisonings per year,” the department said in its public health advisory.
Experts warn that the color of a mushroom is not a reliable way to detect its toxicity, and whether a death cap mushroom is raw, dried or cooked makes no difference.
Laura Marcelino told the San Francisco Chronicle that her family in the northern California town of Salinas collected mushroom-like mushrooms that she and her husband used to forage for food in their native Oaxaca, a state in southern Mexico.
“We thought it was safe,” Marcelino, 36, said in Spanish.
Her husband was dizzy and tired the next day, but Marcelino felt better, so they ate mushrooms again, heating them up in soup with tortillas. Their children didn’t like mushrooms so they didn’t have any. The next day, both adult seasonal agricultural workers fell ill with vomiting and stayed home after work.
Marcelino spent five days in hospital, while her husband underwent a liver transplant.
Experts say people can develop stomach cramps, nausea, diarrhea or vomiting within 24 hours after eating poisonous mushrooms, and the situation can deteriorate quickly after that. Early symptoms may also disappear within a day, but serious to fatal liver damage may develop within two to three days.
Death Cap mushrooms have been collected in local and national parks across Northern California and the Central Coast. Clusters have been identified in the Monterey Bay and San Francisco areas as well.
The public health department said the people who were poisoned included several speakers of Spanish, Mixteco and Mandarin Chinese, and the state in response expanded its warnings in different languages.
Children were among those poisoned this year. Officials advise supervising children and pets outside where mushrooms grow, and purchasing mushrooms from grocery stores and trusted sellers.
Treatment is more difficult once symptoms appear, so doctors advise people to seek medical care as soon as someone realizes or suspects they have ingested a poisonous mushroom.
Death cap fungi tend to flourish between November and March in the state, but usually not to this extent, said Craig Smolin, medical director of the San Francisco division of the California Poison Control System (CPCS) and a professor of emergency medicine at UC San Francisco Medical Center.