Death Caps! An infamous mushroom if ever there was one, and rightly so.
Invasive, abundant, showy, and potentially deadly toxic. A recent article in The Atlantic has brought a renewed surge of attention to this species.
But do we fear them for the right reasons? Or do they occupy an outsize role in the public imagination?
First, a bit of history: death caps (Amanita phalloides) are native to Eurasia (where they are widely distributed), and arrived in America sometime around the 1930s. The first definite records from this side of the Atlantic came from Central California, but the species has since spread rapidly throughout the West. It now reaches north to British Columbia, south to San Diego, and into the Sierra Nevada. It’s only a matter of time until it hops the border into northern Baja California.
All of this is of concern from the perspective of human health and safety. Although year-to-year variation is high, death caps have been involved in human poisonings in the United States on the order of about once per year over the decades since the species was introduced here. The α-amanitin proteins contained in the flesh of death caps survive the heat of cooking, and 10-24 hours after ingestion, severely disrupt liver and kidney functioning. In the worst-case scenarios this is followed by dehydration, multiple organ failure, and painful death.
None of this is pleasant, and all of it should be taken seriously. Mexican and Southeast Asian immigrants account for a disproportionate share of those poisoned by death caps, since similar-looking edible species are found and gathered in Mexico and Southeast Asia. Better education, cautionary signage, and improved diagnosis and treatment are all worthwhile avenues to pursue.
But although death caps are attention-grabbing in the sense that they can cause gruesome deaths, and wild mushrooms are unfamiliar to most Americans, they are truly a minuscule risk in comparison to those incurred by driving, using power tools, or even taking a shower. Mundane, diffuse, familiar causes of injury and death are much harder for us to take seriously, precisely because they are less lurid. And this is a problem.
