Assam: 16 People Die from Mushroom Poisoning
In the Dhemaji area of North Assam on Wednesday night, a total of 16 people, including a young boy, fell ill after eating deadly wild mushrooms.
There were two separate occurrences of this. The first incident took place in Misamara panchayat when eleven people from various villages were harmed by the lethal mushrooms.
Five members of a family were harmed in the second event, which happened the same day and was close to Silapathar town.
According to the District Health Department report, the individuals in question ate mushroom curry on the evening of Tuesday, June 20.
They had vomiting, loose stools, and severe abdominal cramps after eating the mushrooms, leading to their stay in the hospital.
Twenty people died in one of the bloodiest mushroom poisoning occurrences in 2008, and the Assam government established a team to investigate the incident.
The investigation team discovered that the harmful mushroom, Amanita Phalloides Vaill, was poisonous.
It is known as Death Cap and is frequently seen in Assam. It is a dim green or white in appearance. These cannot easily be distinguished from edible ones.
It might be fatal to eat merely one or two of these.
Dilip Kumar Sarma, a researcher at the Assam Agricultural University, told the BBC that “a significant cause for this is the lack of knowledge among workers in tea gardens when it comes to different sorts of mushrooms – they don’t know which kinds aren’t common, which are nutritious, or which are toxic.”
He continues that the only way to solve the issue is to raise knowledge about which mushrooms can be toxic.
However, it must start at the very bottom if a shift in behavior is to be ingrained.