[busterarm]

How many people in the US do you think actually forage wild plants and fungi?

The number of hospitalizations is somewhere around 10k a year. For ~1500 of those it's at least life threatening. ~100ish end up with organ failure or permanent neurological problems. ~10 of them die. That's every year.

That might be mildly dangerous compared to other hobbies, but if you isolate for actual practitioners of the hobby, suddenly those numbers look extremely dangerous.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Where are you getting your data? Is this a specific country/worldwide/what? If you're just talking about the US, a quick Google search shows your numbers are off by a few orders of magnitude. This article from the CDC estimated 100 hospitalizations for mushrooms in the US in 2016: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010a1.htm

Foraging for mushrooms is not dangerous if you know what you're doing and stick to easily identified mushrooms that aren't easily confused with poisonous varieties.

[busterarm]

AAPCC annual reports, linked to from an actual mushroom foraging guide.

Also I said plants and mushrooms. Not specifically mushrooms. AAPCC doesn't track mushrooms separately and I would consider the CDC to not be the authority on poisoning -- their specialty is diseases.

[adamweld]

Here's the relevant section from the 2023 National Poison Data System:

https://i.imgur.com/vIXenG8.png

8294 case mentions, 3039 hospitalizations.

for outcomes check the table.

[owenversteeg]

Huh, that is quite interesting, thank you.

Looks like that includes the hallucinogenic mushrooms, which leads to 2139 case mentions and 1146 hospitalizations a year.