Poisonings from 'death cap' mushrooms in California prompt warning against foraging

After a string of poisonings from “death cap” mushrooms — one fatal — California health officials are urging residents not to eat any foraged mushrooms.

After a string of poisonings from “death cap” mushrooms — one of them fatal — California health officials are urging residents not to eat any foraged mushrooms unless they are trained experts.

Doctors in the San Francisco Bay Area have blamed the wild mushroom, also called Amanita phalloides, for 23 poisoning cases reported to the California Poison Control System since Nov. 18, according to Dr. Craig Smollin, medical director for the system’s San Francisco division.

“All of these patients were involved with independently foraging the mushrooms from the wild,” Smollin, who is a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said at a news conference Tuesday. “They all developed symptoms within the first 24 hours, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain.”

Smollin said some of the patients were parts of cohorts that had consumed the same batch of foraged mushrooms. The largest group was about seven people, he said.

All of the patients were hospitalized, at least briefly. One died. Five remain in hospital care. One has received a liver transplant, and another is on a donation list awaiting a transplant, Smollin said. The patients are 1½ to 56 years old.