I think it mostly has to do with environmental factors like petrochemicals and heavy metals in substrate. A lot of wood debris is used industrially to absorb chemicals and such and then is often dumped in municipal waste sites. That debris is then sold/spread in gardens and parks all over town or sold to other people/places. Trees are really good at pulling things like mercury, arsenic, cobaldt, cadmium, copper, lead, as well as pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer out of soils and trapping it up in their tissues. Toxins could come from many places. People drench landscapes with glyphosate and I doubt that is good to consume in a possibly rearranged form and concentrated. Fungi are master re-arrangers of molecules. One of their main functions as part of the ecosystem is to re-appropriate toxins.
The only times I've seen this happen to anyone, the fruits were collected from less than ideal places like public parks where waste water is used for irrigation and herbicides/pesticides are regularly applied or parking lot islands or industrial sites.
Unless you made the wood chips yourself you have no idea if it is clean or not. Many species of plants and trees also produce toxins that are harmful to humans such as rhododendron or eucalyptus or black walnut. Public mulch is often comprised of lots of questionable material.
-------------------- “Better to be deprived of food for three days, than tea for one.”
Freedom is not the right to do as you please, but the liberty to do as you should. ~Emerson
Edited by Nichrome (09/08/20 07:50 AM)
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