Twenty people are poisoned every year by eating mushrooms they have collected themselves

Every year, twenty people in the Netherlands are poisoned every year by eating mushrooms they have collected themselves. This says the National Poisons Information Center (NVIC). Since 2019, four people have died after eating poisonous mushrooms, NVIC reports. There are several types of poisonous mushrooms, the consumption of which can have serious consequences.

The most poisonous mushroom in the Netherlands is the green tuberous manite. In some stages of growth, it is very similar to non-toxic mushrooms, such as mushrooms. Eating them can severely damage the liver and kidneys, leading to death in some cases.

The NVIC warns annually about the dangers of picking wild mushrooms. However, the number of poisoning reports remains the same. “The tricky thing is that we often don’t reach the right target group with our warnings,” says Douwe Dekker, acute medicine internist at UMC Utrecht and affiliated with the NVIC.

Although wild gathering has become more popular among the Dutch, it is mainly people with an Eastern European background who are poisoned. In many Eastern European countries, there is a “rich tradition of harvesting,” explains Dekker. Highly poisonous green tuberous manite is not found in those countries and as young tuberous manites are very similar to edible mushrooms, this often goes wrong.

This is why the NVIC started sending leaflets to asylum seeker centers in the fall to inform asylum seekers about poisonous mushrooms in the Netherlands. State Forestry generally allows small-scale wild collection for personal use, but the Forestry Commission does not recommend mushroom picking. It is also not allowed in all municipalities.