Deadly lookalikes

"The day before Christmas Eve, M.G., a 34-year-old Maya Mam immigrant from Guatemala, was walking through a park in the East Oakland hills with her husband and two children when she noticed a cluster of fleshy white mushrooms poking out of the rain-dampened soil. They looked familiar. In the highlands of her native Guatemala, a similar-looking mushroom, known colloquially as a piosh, is commonly foraged from the wild and eaten."

"Around eight hours later, M.G began to feel sick. So did her husband and son. They felt nauseated and were vomiting, and had muscle fatigue and diarrhea, she explained in Mam, a Mayan language, through a translator. Their symptoms worsened as the day wore on. Her husband's condition, in particular, deteriorated rapidly."

"An exceptionally wet series of early winter storms in the Bay Area has led to a surge in the sprouting of death caps, among the most poisonous mushrooms in the world, across the region's parks, hills, and trails. The superbloom has coincided with what public-health officials describe as an unprecedented wave of mushroom poisonings that appears to be falling disproportionately on immigrants."

A Maya Mam immigrant from Guatemala mistakenly identified and consumed a death cap mushroom in an East Oakland park, believing it was the edible piosh mushroom from her homeland. She, her husband, and teenage son became severely ill with nausea, vomiting, muscle fatigue, and diarrhea within eight hours and required hospitalization. The incident reflects a broader public health crisis: exceptionally wet early winter storms in the Bay Area triggered a superbloom of death cap mushrooms, among the world's most poisonous fungi, across parks and trails. Public health officials report an unprecedented wave of mushroom poisonings that disproportionately affects immigrant communities who rely on traditional foraging practices and may not recognize dangerous lookalikes in California.

Read at The Oaklandside