During the night of Saturday, six people had to be taken to hospital after a family dinner where they may have eaten poisonous panther fly mushroom, reports Today’s news.
An ambulance was called to the address in Stockholm for a suspected cardiac arrest in an adult man. There were also five children at the address who were unwell. They were taken to different hospitals, and the man was in intensive care for a day before being admitted to a regular ward. The children have been allowed to leave the hospitals, while the man is still receiving treatment.
The poison information centre’s hypothesis, after seeing somewhat unclear pictures, is that the victims thought they had eaten proud mountain pine but in fact ingested panther fly mushroom. It is poisonous but not fatal.
This is how you know if the mushroom is poisonous
The most common mistakes made when picking mushrooms are the confusion between mushrooms and white fly agaric, explains the mushroom consultant, Per Axel Karlsson.
But he also warns about insidious fly agaric mushrooms that have been confused in recent years by people who come here from other countries, says Per Axel, who brings up an example of a woman who died a few years ago after picking and eating an insidious fly agaric.
– The most important thing to think about is to know the mushroom you are picking and not to take chances.
Ideally, you should start by learning a few mushrooms really well and then increase with 1-2 mushrooms per year, explains the mushroom consultant. A kind of mushroom that you can easily learn to recognize and feel safe with is soups, says Per Axel.
– That is something you can be really sure of. There is no deadly poisonous species in Sweden, he says.
However, there is a type of soup that can make you really sick and that is the “devil’s soup”. A variety found on Gotland and Öland, but not in northern Sweden, explains Per Axel.
Per Axel also advises getting a mushroom book that has very good pictures and species distributions.
– You don’t buy a mushroom book with 70-80 species and go out into the forest and start picking, explains Per Axel.
Funnel chanterelles
One type of mushroom that Per Axel believes you should be careful with is chanterelles.
– It is a good edible mushroom, but there is a risk of poisoning. If you are careless and just raving about yourself, it has happened in Sweden and Norway that several people have been poisoned, he says.
In conclusion, Per Axel suggests taking a mushroom course.
– Then you get help from someone who can inform you about the risks as well, he says.
Every year, 150–200 people are treated in hospital after mushroom poisoning. But only one to two people get so bad that intensive care is required, DN reports