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Hamurabi
the babylonianleader..
Registered: 03/31/02
Posts: 2,421
Loc: Greece
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!!
#3327893 - 11/06/04 02:27 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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hi guys. Just a report. Here in Greece the last 3-4 weeks lots of people from random villages of the country are in the hospital due to mushroom poisoning. Most of them are middle aged people who collect edible mushrooms for more than 20-30 years !! Even though all of them were sure that they collected the mushroom that they collect for all these years, they are now fighting for their lives. a few are in comma.
The facts show that the people were not fool young guys that found a few shrooms in a forest and eat them. these people are from random villages and they all were hunting shrooms for lots of years. and now all at the same time are in the hospital.
weird,isn't it?
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nycomyco
Stranger
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: Hamurabi]
#3327915 - 11/06/04 02:33 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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Wow! That's scary. I wonder what types of mushrooms were they confusing. Do you know if they were collecting edibles?
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Hamurabi
the babylonianleader..
Registered: 03/31/02
Posts: 2,421
Loc: Greece
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: nycomyco]
#3327932 - 11/06/04 02:37 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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they were collecting only edibles. not magic. but it's weird that these people would NEVER confuse the mushroom they coolect for 30 years!!! and it looks something more than just a coincidence!! all these people at the same time?!?! very weird..
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Psilygirl
cyan goddess
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: Hamurabi]
#3327939 - 11/06/04 02:38 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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can you link us to an article??
and do you know what edible?
-------------------- "Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two, my life flows." Puget Sound Mycological Society
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eris
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: Hamurabi]
#3327970 - 11/06/04 02:46 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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Strange, ya. Makes me think that some other sort of toxin is out there and that maybe they didn't die from just the mushrooms themselves. Possibly the way that they were cooked or a few bad ones got mixed into the bunch? I tried a quick search on google but I didn't see this story in the first two pages.. I'm too lazy to search right now.
-------------------- Immortal / Temporarily Retired The OG Thread Killer My mushroom hunting gallery
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Hamurabi
the babylonianleader..
Registered: 03/31/02
Posts: 2,421
Loc: Greece
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: eris]
#3327991 - 11/06/04 03:20 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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they were not the same mushrooms. different mushrooms (always edibles) in different locations!!! i am now seraching for an article,if i'll find i'll post it here!
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ToxicMan
Bite me, it's fun!
Registered: 06/28/02
Posts: 6,725
Loc: Aurora, Colorado
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: Hamurabi]
#3328136 - 11/06/04 04:15 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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How certain is it that they are suffering from mushroom poisoning? Although all of them seem to have recently picked and eaten wild mushrooms, that practice is much more common in Europe and Asia than in North America.
We should note that people who pick mushrooms based on folk traditions (these people very probably qualify) often base their selection of edible mushrooms on a few basic rules. When a rare species (poisonous) fruits in quantity they may find large quantities of a mushroom that fits their rules of what an edible mushroom is. This has resulted in numerous mass poisonings historically. A situation like this is how Cortinarius orellanus was discovered to be deadly poison. There was another similar situation in Turkey awhile back involving a deadly species of Lepiota.
If mushroom poisoning is the actual cause of the illnesses, then we will probably hear eventually how an unusual fruiting of a dangerously poisonous mushroom fooled a bunch of people who had never seen it before.
One unfortunate moral of stories like this is that those simple rules you'll hear from time to time on how to identify edible (active, whatever) mushrooms have exceptions that eventually ween to lead to tragic results. The only reliable way known to be safe when eating wild mushrooms is to identify them accurately.
Happy mushrooming!
-------------------- Happy mushrooming!
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SoftRat
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: ToxicMan]
#3328489 - 11/06/04 06:53 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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I agree.
-------------------- Everything I say in these posts is a made up fiction.
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Hamurabi
the babylonianleader..
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Loc: Greece
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: SoftRat]
#3328792 - 11/06/04 08:51 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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toxicman what you say is so truth but you didnt get the weirdness of the situation. if it was 1-2 or maybe 3 people poisoned at the same time i would say it is coincidence but here there are more than 15 people at the same time from random villages each of them !!!! here in Greece we hear about mushroom poisoning about 1-2-3 people once a year. and now we have 15 and more people at the same month!!!! this is the weird!!! and not kidds. all of them are mushrooms hunters for 20-30 years (30 years is a lot!!! think about this!)!!!
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Signo
manamana
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: Hamurabi]
#3328861 - 11/06/04 09:20 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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Maybe something poisonous got dumped in random areas resulting in the mushrooms absorbing the toxin?
-------------------- Correlation is not causation!
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balls
thats right
Registered: 10/31/04
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: Signo]
#3329193 - 11/06/04 11:22 PM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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hamurabi is right
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ToxicMan
Bite me, it's fun!
Registered: 06/28/02
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: Hamurabi]
#3329686 - 11/07/04 05:51 AM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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In the case with Cortinarius orellanus in the early 1950's there were 102 seriously ill people and 11 fatalities. This was in Poland from a population of enthusiastic mushroom hunters. Related species had been considered to be edible until an alert doctor made the connection.
In Turkey in 1988 there were 34 poisonings by Lepiota helveola or Lepiota castanae with 14 fatalities. The high fatality rate was due to the victims not seeking medical attention. After some publicity, later victims sought medical attention and the death rate dropped. Out of the first 11 poisonings, 10 died.
This incident is not as atypical as you suspect. A significant percentage of worldwide mushroom fatalities are from clusters of poisonings just like this. The two examples I have given a bit more details on above were just the two that popped into my head within about 10 seconds. I could list tons of examples like them.
The unfortunate reality is that most mushroom hunters are not very good at identification. They have some rule(s) their grandmother taught them that work most of the time. When an unusual fruiting of a dangerous poisonous mushroom happens, a number of these people get caught with an exception to the rule(s) they learned.
On the positive side in this case, we're not hearing about a big cluster of fatalities.
Remember, most of these stories never make the news at all in the US.
Every year when I'm out hunting I meet people who are also mushroom hunting. When I can, I get them to let me examine their finds and identify them. I am often horrified at some of the mushrooms they have picked to eat. It's not that unusual to find a species that is known to have caused fatalities in somebody's basket. The worst ones are mushrooms that don't always cause a poisoning.
Incidentally, the name ToxicMan is partially derived from my long term interest in toxicology. I have been hunting mushrooms and eating them for about 30 years without ever being poisoned. Mostly by being very cautious, but luck is probably a factor, especially back in the early years. I have also been on call for the Poison Center for mushroom poisonings and have had to try and identify a mushroom being described by some guy in a hospital at 1:00 in the morning because somebody ate some they shouldn't have and they're now in the emergency room.
An important thing for anybody who wants to hunt and eat mushrooms is that they should know every deadly poisonous mushroom they might possibly find. There aren't that many of them. You should make certain that what you're eating has no possibility of being one of those deadly mushrooms. At least then, if you get poisoned, you've reduced your chances of dying from your mistake to almost zero.
Happy mushrooming!
-------------------- Happy mushrooming!
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phantasm
DXM GURU
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: ToxicMan]
#3329832 - 11/07/04 08:23 AM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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yeah same thing happened in Japan i heard they think the mushrooms may have mutated becuase of the large amounts of rain and super high temperatures over there
-mike
the mushrooms they were collecting were oster mushrooms i for get which strain
-------------------- Only God Grows Amanita Muscaria
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Anno
Experimenter
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: ToxicMan]
#3330030 - 11/07/04 10:17 AM (19 years, 4 months ago) |
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This reminds me of the recent situation in Japan:
"Saturday, October 23, 2004 at 00:24 JST TOKYO ? The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry warned people with kidney problems against consuming edible wild mushrooms called "sugihiratake" after several people died recently from acute brain disorder after eating them.
The ministry asked prefectural governments across Japan to issue warnings over the mushrooms with the Latin name of Pleurocybella porrigens and known as Angel's Wings in English. (Kyodo News) "
More here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/3266725
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AIRDOG
Registered: 10/16/99
Posts: 3,493
Loc: world's shroom capital
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Re: weird situation in mushroom hunting in Greece!! [Re: Hamurabi]
#10348048 - 05/16/09 10:28 AM (14 years, 10 months ago) |
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Guys think about it... Maybe there is some kind of toxic pollution in the places where those mushrooms were collected, and the mushrooms absorbed unusual toxins
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