Potentially Toxic Mushrooms Were Sold at a Farmers Market Near Nelson - The Tyee

Listen to this article 11 min On Sunday Naomi Legg sold mushrooms she incorrectly identified as chanterelles at her Dreamcatcher Farm Harrop stand at the Harrop community hall farmers market, about a 30-minute drive north of Nelson. ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS & MORE FROM TYEE AND SELECT PARTNERS Take a Trip with Us: VIFF’s Documentary Series Spans the Globe ‘Insights’ takes audiences far and wide with stories of struggle, triumph and renewal. Later that day the mushrooms were tentatively identified as Paxillus involutus, which can cause severe health outcomes if ingested. Interior Health got involved, issuing a public health notice later that day, warning people not to eat the mushrooms. About 10 trays of mushrooms were sold. The BC Drug and Poison Information Centre has received a “small” number of calls reporting minor illness, Dr. Andy Delli Pizzi, medical health officer for Interior Health, told The Tyee. So far no major illness has been reported, he said. It is not clear if anyone who ate these mushrooms is out of the woods because not a lot is known about how this mushroom makes people sick, he added. The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada Interior Health is still working to confirm that all customers who may have bought the mushrooms have been contacted, he added. “It is important people do not consume this mushroom,” he said. The Tyee contacted Legg to ask what happened, but she declined an interview. Paul Kroeger, who has studied fungi in B.C. for 50 years and works as the chief mushroom identifier for poison control and the BC Centre for Disease Control, said the mushroom may have been Paxillus involutus, but it may also have been another species of Paxillus. Paxillus involutus is a known toxic mushroom, although it does not always seem to negatively affect people and the risk of toxicity seems to increase when the mushroom is eaten regularly, he said. Interior Health said poisoning symptoms generally start within two hours of ingestion and include nausea, vomiting, dark-coloured urine and diarrhea. In more extreme cases, eating Paxillus involutus can cause autoimmune hemolytic anemia, a potentially life-threatening condition in which the body’s immune system attacks its own red blood cells, Kroeger said. B.C. is home to about 3,500 species of mushrooms, so it can be hard to identify a mushroom from a picture, Kroeger said. He said Legg believed she’d correctly identified the…