It is inexperienced mushroom pickers who usually fall victim to death caps, mistaking them for similar in appearance edible species.
Marta Wrzosek of the University of Warsaw told the Polish news agency PAP that sometimes, eating just one cap of this extremely poisonous mushroom can lead to a painful death.
It is amanitin—one of the deadliest of all the toxins found in mushrooms—that makes it deadly to humans as it destroys liver cells.
Wrzosek said: “The whole cellular machinery in the liver gives up. It’s like throwing a monkey wrench into the works. The liver stops functioning.”
Often, the only way out for people poisoned by the death cap is a liver transplant. However, it is not always possible to save their lives as time is a very important factor here.
The symptoms of poisoning usually appear late—after six or, sometimes, even 16 hours—when the toxins have already penetrated the blood.
So once dizziness, headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, accelerated heart rate, and breathing difficulties appear, people with poisoning symptoms should be taken to the hospital immediately to speed up procedures, including the search for a suitable liver donor.
Wrzosek said: “The trouble is that if poisonings by this fungus do occur, whole families usually succumb to them, as a few death cap mushrooms end up in a common pot with other tasty mushrooms.”
However, she added that this year there have been no poisonings by these mushrooms in Poland, except for one case.
The death cap most commonly grows under birches, beeches, and oaks in deciduous or mixed forests. It usually appears from July to October.
