Dad hospitalised after eating handpicked poisonous mushrooms
A Perth father-of-two has been hospitalised after eating poisonous mushrooms he picked from a front lawn.
Marco Meloni found a patch of wild mushrooms growing on a Nedlands front lawn last week.
Mr Meloni said the mushrooms “looked very similar to mushrooms you'd buy at the super market”. He picked a bag full, added a bit of salt and pepper and fried them up.
“I reckon I had half a kilo, a whole plate full,” he said.
But just an hour later Mr Meloni was in the emergency room at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. He lost 7kg in less than 24 hours.
Mushroom picking is a tradition in his family and he said he normally consults a fungus encyclopedia before he cooks but misplaced it last week.
He now knows the name of the mushroom’s he ate.
“Poison pie. Would you believe it? Poison pie,” Mr Meloni said.
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Toxicologists said there are multiple species of mushrooms around Perth that look edible but are poisonous. Their recommendation is not to eat wild mushrooms unless they're purchased from a reputable source.
“You can die from it,” Mr Meloni said.
“It just shuts down your organs. Buy your mushrooms fresh - off the shelf.
