A group of language students from Thailand are recovering in a Swedish hospital after making a home cooked meal with poisonous mushrooms. Despite consulting a book about the dos and don’ts of mushroom picking in Sweden, the 10 students still proceeded to make the mistake of picking poisonous fungi, possibly including the potentially-deadly death cap mushrooms while foraging for their dinner.
“They could have died,” said Urban Safwenberg, at the emergency healthcare services in the Uppsala University Hospital. “As it could be a case of poisoning we have taken all 10 in for care. Early intervention can be decisive to prevent fatalities if it concerns a death cap or fly agaric mushroom,” added Safwenberg in an interview with broadcaster TV4 Nyherterna Uppsala.
Soon after guzzling down their potentially lethal meal, the group experienced symptoms of diarrhoea and stomach cramps.
Mushroom picking is a popular pastime at this time of year in Sweden and the country’s forests have produced a bumper crop in 2010. As the conditions are right for all kinds of mushrooms to flourish, however, poisoning incidents have also risen dramatically.
“I come from the UK and people go crazy for mushrooms over here and stupidly don’t do enough research before venturing out into the wilds to find them!”
Thai’s have been killed in the UK eating collected mushrooms. In Poland you can buy the spores and plant them in tree roots, ensuring you get what you expect
I’m really surprised these guys made it. Death caps are notorious and sounds like they ingested quite a few. I come from the UK and people go crazy for mushrooms over here and stupidly don’t do enough research before venturing out into the wilds to find them!! Beware people
Death caps (Amanita phalloides) are deadly, the fly agaric (A. muscaria) which is pictured, is not. In fact there are many who use the latter for a “mind altering experience”. (Not recommended.) The “soon after” time frame is indicative that the mushrooms were not the deadly one mentioned, but rather A. muscaria. Life threatening mushroom poisonings typically don’t cause symptoms for 12 hours or more.