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motaman
old hand
Reged: 12/18/02
Posts: 5024
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'Death cap' mushrooms sicken family
09/20/06 08:10 PM
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http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr...jd2cWVlRUV5eTU=
'Death cap' mushrooms sicken family
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
By WILLIAM LAMB
STAFF WRITER
Four members of an Emerson family should consider themselves "extremely lucky" to be alive after eating wild mushrooms plucked from their front yard last week, a state poisoning expert said Tuesday.
One member of the family remained hospitalized in good condition at Pascack Valley Hospital on Tuesday, five days after the family picked the mushrooms during a party and served them with that night's dinner. Two others were released from the hospital Tuesday, a Pascack Valley spokesman said.
The family went to the emergency room Friday, about 17 hours after eating the mushrooms, complaining of nausea and diarrhea, said Dr. Steven Marcus, executive director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System. Marcus said two men and two women were sickened after eating the mushrooms, but he declined to disclose the names or ages of the victims.
The mushroom they ate is called Amanita virosa, also known as the "death cap," Marcus said.
It is a large, white mushroom with cream-colored gills that grows throughout North America. It often is mistaken, sometimes with deadly consequences, for harmless mushrooms that grow overseas, Marcus said.
Ingestion of an Amanita mushroom triggers severe nausea, often followed by liver and kidney failure, Marcus said. Thirty percent to 40 percent of such poisoning cases are fatal, he said.
"These are very deadly mushrooms," Marcus said. "The family of four was extremely lucky."
Marcus said health officials had been trying to contact a man, thought to be a relative of the Emerson family, who is visiting the United States from China. The man attended the party last Thursday and left the area Friday, taking a bus to Georgia. Hospitals and poison-control centers in that state have been told to be on the lookout for anyone with poisoning symptoms, Marcus said.
The Pascack Valley spokesman, John Corcoran, said it is "very likely" that the remaining victim will be released from the hospital today.
None of the people developed liver or kidney failure, Marcus said, but the good news doesn't mean the family is out of danger. The symptoms could reappear, he said, in which case the family has been instructed to report to an emergency room.
A safe rule of thumb, Marcus said, is to never eat any mushroom that doesn't come from a supermarket shelf.
"I don't like to be glib, but if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it," he said. "That's true of a lot of things, but with something like mushrooms it could end up costing you your life."
The episode reminded Marcus of an old saying:
"There are old mushroom pickers and there are bold mushroom pickers," he said. "But there are no old, bold mushroom pickers."
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