CityNews – Over 600 people across the north of Thailand have fallen ill after consuming wild mushrooms, the NNT reported July 24th.
The Death Cap
Dr. Narong Sahamethapat, the Permanent Secretary of the Public Health Ministry, said a total of 649 people ate poisonous mushrooms, which usually grow during the rainy season. Most patients are from the North and Northeast of Thailand.
Two of the most common and harmful mushrooms belong to the genus Amanita, which grows naturally in the wild in the North. The mushrooms contain amatoxins, which can cause liver and kidney failure. The main problem is that the mushrooms don’t look too dissimilar from edible mushrooms, making farmers susceptible to picking the wrong ones.
The genus Amanita contains some of the world’s most toxic mushrooms – including the death cap, the destroying angel, and the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushrooms – which are responsible for 95% of death related to mushroom poisoning throughout the world. In Chiang Mai every year numerous deaths occur after poisonous mushrooms are ingested.