Of all 5,000 mushroom species that exist in the forest and soil in Sweden that can be seen with the naked eye, only about 100 are edible.
Every year, we are particularly worried about poisonings from mushrooms that contain amatoxins or orellanin. Both can cause life-threatening symptoms, says Peter Hultén, pharmacist at the Poison Information Center.
Life-threatening toxins
Amatoxin is found, among other things, in white and deceptive death cap mushrooms as well as in the small poisonous webcap. First, they cause stomach sickness, then a temporary improvement – but after one to two days, liver damage can occur, sometimes followed by liver failure.
Orellanin occurs in conical webcap and orange-brown webcap. The symptoms, such as nausea, chills, and headache, often come first after several days and are associated with kidney damage.
Looking at deaths that have occurred in general over the years, it is basically always deaths within the group with amatoxins, says Peter Hultén.
The Poison Information Center is not aware of any deaths that should have occurred this year.
A rule of thumb
For inexperienced mushroom pickers, there is a simple rule of thumb: avoid mushrooms with white gills and brown mushrooms with brown gills.
A classic mistake is to confuse champignon with white death cap. Champignons have pink or dark gills, white death cap has white gills, says Peter Hultén.
Learning to recognize white death cap, deceptive death cap, and conical webcap makes you fairly safe. They are the most common deadly species, says Michael Krikorev, mycologist at SLU.
Learn one mushroom at a time.
Do not take chances, only pick mushrooms that you are sure are edible mushrooms.
Avoid mushrooms with white gills.
Avoid brown mushrooms with brown gills.
Make sure that only edible mushrooms end up in the basket, it can easily happen that mistakes are made if children are with you.
Those who want to learn more about mushrooms can contact the Swedish Association of Mushroom Consultants. They organize courses and excursions. Including on the mushroom day which falls on the first Sunday in September.
Source: Peter Hultén, Poison Information Center, and Michael Krikorev, SLU.
