Eleven people were hospitalized after they ate wild and apparently toxic mushrooms last week, a fire agency that serves Pennsylvania Dutch Country said.
The patients in Peach Bottom Township were a man, a woman and nine children who were treated at a hospital and released, according to NBC affiliate WGAL of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
The township is in Dutch Country, which overlaps with Amish Country and shares culture and history, about 80 miles west of Philadelphia on Pennsylvania’s border with Maryland.
The station reported that family members foraged wild mushrooms and ate them Friday night.
WGAL reported that a family member had to walk a half-mile to find a public phone to dial 911. The Amish generally disallow cellphones and other contemporary devices and technology.
Emergency medical personnel arrived after 9:30 p.m. Friday and helped transport all 11 patients, Delta-Cardiff Volunteer Fire Company Station 57 said in a statement.
Because so many people were ill, the situation was designated a “mass casualty incident,” the agency said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people who are not trained experts known as mycologists should almost never eat mushrooms foraged outdoors.
Most of the known mushroom poisonings and deaths in the U.S. involve foraging of Amanita phalloides mushrooms, known as “death caps,” in the wild, the CDC said in a report on the toxic fungi.
Eating them can cause death, as well as abdominal discomfort, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration and liver damage, it said.
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