I’m probably missing a joke, but there isn’t a single mushroom that’s toxic or poisonous from just touching. In fact, they are only poisonous if ingested, meaning you can chew on a poisonous mushroom, spit it out and be absolutely fine.
i was trying to be funny. fill redact with paralyse or kill.
I would not recommend chewing (and subsequent spitting) mostly because you do not know (of the top of your head) about the toxic dosage, and it may enter your blood (where if it enters, game over i guess). think some amount of exposed area near your gums, or micro-scissions. Same with picking, maybe you cut your nails recently and have exposed skin (blood will likely help by clottong and blocking) or while foraging, you ran next to a sharp branch or bark and have a deep scratch exposing blood. not likely stuff.
also i do not know much about mushrooms, and likely their toxic nature is completely different from stuff like ivies (poison ivy for example) where just contact on exposed skin can cause immune response (swelling, itching, etc), but maybe (possibly) some mushrooms would have some toxic thing on surface.
(following comment is long, so natural guess would be that i used a llm to write it - i did not. my poor structure sentence, grammar and spellings should indicate that. So please read it - if you are uninterested, skip the middle section and jump mostly from 3rd last para).
since i clearly do not know mushrooms (or botany for that matter, i have studied biochem moostly at intro level, so that is about it), i looked up mushroom toxicity, and most websites roughly say ‘“generally safe” to touch, but don’t ingest and wash hands’. thing is, these guidelines are said for pretty much anything, since ingestion is the easiest way to go beyond our primary defense (skin). so i tried to look up mechanisms, and found the following article
so i am trying to find mechanisms of toxicity which do not specifically require digestion metabolic pathways (you have metabolic processes happening in all cells, so general oxidation and reduction do not count as ingestion specific, as that can happen from topical contact only).
gyromitrin - ‘Toxicosis can result from oral and inhalation exposure.’ so likely getting into bloodstream from lungs. further processes require hydrolysis at low ph, so not happening in blood as is. but if we consider a small amount of hydrolysis, it can still form formaldehyde on oxidation.
also
‘enzyme that is directly inhibited by gyromitrin is the pyridoxal phosphokinase. This enzyme is responsible for dietary vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) conversion into active pyridoxal 5-phosphate (Horowitz et al., 2024[53]). Moreover, in vitro and in vivo, MMH may generate hydrazones with pyridoxal-5-phosphate (Barceloux, 2008[8]). Pyridoxal-5-phosphate is a cofactor for glutamic acid decarboxylase and GABA transaminase in the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) synthetic pathway, which results in decreased GABA synthesis (Barceloux, 2008[8]). MMH can directly block glutamic acid decarboxylase when given intraperitoneally to rats at a concentration of 0.8 mM/kg, resulting in a further decrease in GABA levels (Medina 1963[71]).’
so gaba (for now, just consider it something required in brain for optimal signalling)(signalling refers to neuron activation here) is disturbed. this is a direct effect, no metabolic activity required.
moving onto - ‘Orellanine is a potent nephrotoxin found in some species of the genus Cortinarius’. nephro means kidney here.
Orellanine toxic pathway is not clear, but none of the proposed methods suggest metabolic pathways, and mostly go like after ingestion of so many grams, so and so amount is found concentrated in kidneys (and since the same compund is found, it mostly got absorbed into blood from intestines, and then filtered by blood.
also ‘Orellanine disrupts LLC-PK1 cell monolayers and inhibits membrane-bound alkaline phosphatase and cytosolic lactate dehydrogenase activity’
moving to Cyclopeptides - Phallotoxins and Amatoxins.
‘Amatoxins are able to inhibit mainly the activity of the RNA polymerase II (RNAP II) and also polymerase III (RNAP III), through α-amanitin and β-amanitin (respectively) (Diaz 2018[27]), resulting in decreases in mRNA content, causing deficient protein synthesis and cell death (Garcia et al., 2015[42]) (Figure 7(Fig. 7)).’
‘α-Amanitin has been shown to act synergistically with cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and this may be the final cause of liver failure.’
then the article goes into antidotes.
point being - all the toxic things (except partly the first one, which would be much slower in one of its pathways) do not require digestive metabolic pathways, just have to reach blood, and then time and amount is key.
Should i say on stuff that I do not have knowledge about - no, mostly. my first comment was mostly written in humor, the way the parent commenter wrote. but then the asked about it in followup, and they guessed it was a joke too. but i still replied and gave a plausible reasoning for my comment, mostly because that is kinda how i like my humor (be at least partially based on reality, and then change it). could i have done a better job? sure, but I do not think i did a gross injustice. most comments that are written are not refering or citing reearch articles. I had heard of how some mushroom toxins work ( i had heard of nephro one sspecifically), so based my response on that. as to where i got that - i dont know, probably some youtube video.
And finally - can you please turn down the sass just a notch. you seemingly were unhappy with my comment (possibly a seasoned forager, or a mushroom toxicology researcher), unhappy enough to downvote both comments. and someone also agreed with you, so they likely have similar knowledge i presume. given these facts, would you like to revisit your comment, or voting. If nothing, at least respond to this comment. I think my ego is fragile enough to reply to a single line comment with 500+ words just so i can say i was write, but i do not like being wrong.
What they mean is that there is no mushroom that will kill you from touch or even chewing and then spitting. Amanita Phaloides needs around 20g of dry mushroom to kill a healthy human. I chewed some before and spat it out just to know what it tastes like, the only reason I won’t send a video of me doing it is because I want to stay anonymous.
There are however some scleroderma that can cause conjunctivitis from touching them and then touching your eyes.
i beg your pardon for following rudeness, but did you read the above message? I completely trust you that you tasted a mushroom and spat it, to live and tell the story to me, but what you are saying is that a certain mushroom requires a certain amount to kill a person. firstly i do not know how was that number found (as in ingestion or directly shooting it’s extract to blood). when you ingest, you do not absorb anything, and there is a potential that directly exposed will require a lesser critical dose. and beyond that - toxins do not require digestive pathways.
the number is most likely calculated by measuring the amount present in a failed organ (in a dead patient mostly) and scaling to whole body and asking from surrounding folks how much they ate, and then matching with toxin concentration in mushroom. this lethal amount is not same for direct blood stream exposure.
you possibly want to say something like - mushrooms do not have enough to kill you just from touch or chew/spit, but not will. will suggests that there is some specific reason that either mushrooms can not produce enoug toxin to kill you from touch.
I would still stand by my original statment that it is stupid to expose contact or chew/spit. I am not saying you are stupid, I hav willingly tasted/sniffed many chemicals (not safe ones), but that is more of a decision (as in for learning purposes like you did for taste or for fun(that i do mostly)). It does not make that activity safe.
Up front, yeah, I absolutely didn’t read all of that.
I am an amateur forager, and while I’m confident enough to sight identify common edibles and eat them, I don’t consider myself to “know about mushrooms” either. My problem with your comment is that it’s just as bad as AI giving advice; people might skim through and take it as fact without reading your little disclaimer, just like people skim through and take AI as fact without knowing better. That probably seems fine on the surface because your comment is just the opposite of the meme and, if followed, your advice will definitely prevent anyone getting poisoned. Unfortunately, it also will really discourage anyone interested in foraging. I’d hate for someone to miss out on a fun, healthy hobby because you can’t just keep your shit to your self.
Lemmy has communities where people who know what they’re talking about can give actual good advice. Please seek one out!
It wasn’t wrong. All mushrooms are edible at least once.
As hilarious as every other time it’s posted, but incorrect.
some of them are so toxic, just the act of touching or picking them could redact you, so you would not be able to eat it.
Redact me? What’s that?
I’m probably missing a joke, but there isn’t a single mushroom that’s toxic or poisonous from just touching. In fact, they are only poisonous if ingested, meaning you can chew on a poisonous mushroom, spit it out and be absolutely fine.
i was trying to be funny. fill redact with paralyse or kill.
I would not recommend chewing (and subsequent spitting) mostly because you do not know (of the top of your head) about the toxic dosage, and it may enter your blood (where if it enters, game over i guess). think some amount of exposed area near your gums, or micro-scissions. Same with picking, maybe you cut your nails recently and have exposed skin (blood will likely help by clottong and blocking) or while foraging, you ran next to a sharp branch or bark and have a deep scratch exposing blood. not likely stuff.
also i do not know much about mushrooms, and likely their toxic nature is completely different from stuff like ivies (poison ivy for example) where just contact on exposed skin can cause immune response (swelling, itching, etc), but maybe (possibly) some mushrooms would have some toxic thing on surface.
We can tell
sure, but was anything wrong in second paragraph?
(following comment is long, so natural guess would be that i used a llm to write it - i did not. my poor structure sentence, grammar and spellings should indicate that. So please read it - if you are uninterested, skip the middle section and jump mostly from 3rd last para).
since i clearly do not know mushrooms (or botany for that matter, i have studied biochem moostly at intro level, so that is about it), i looked up mushroom toxicity, and most websites roughly say ‘“generally safe” to touch, but don’t ingest and wash hands’. thing is, these guidelines are said for pretty much anything, since ingestion is the easiest way to go beyond our primary defense (skin). so i tried to look up mechanisms, and found the following article
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11333700/
so i am trying to find mechanisms of toxicity which do not specifically require digestion metabolic pathways (you have metabolic processes happening in all cells, so general oxidation and reduction do not count as ingestion specific, as that can happen from topical contact only).
gyromitrin - ‘Toxicosis can result from oral and inhalation exposure.’ so likely getting into bloodstream from lungs. further processes require hydrolysis at low ph, so not happening in blood as is. but if we consider a small amount of hydrolysis, it can still form formaldehyde on oxidation.
also
‘enzyme that is directly inhibited by gyromitrin is the pyridoxal phosphokinase. This enzyme is responsible for dietary vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) conversion into active pyridoxal 5-phosphate (Horowitz et al., 2024[53]). Moreover, in vitro and in vivo, MMH may generate hydrazones with pyridoxal-5-phosphate (Barceloux, 2008[8]). Pyridoxal-5-phosphate is a cofactor for glutamic acid decarboxylase and GABA transaminase in the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) synthetic pathway, which results in decreased GABA synthesis (Barceloux, 2008[8]). MMH can directly block glutamic acid decarboxylase when given intraperitoneally to rats at a concentration of 0.8 mM/kg, resulting in a further decrease in GABA levels (Medina 1963[71]).’
so gaba (for now, just consider it something required in brain for optimal signalling)(signalling refers to neuron activation here) is disturbed. this is a direct effect, no metabolic activity required.
moving onto - ‘Orellanine is a potent nephrotoxin found in some species of the genus Cortinarius’. nephro means kidney here.
Orellanine toxic pathway is not clear, but none of the proposed methods suggest metabolic pathways, and mostly go like after ingestion of so many grams, so and so amount is found concentrated in kidneys (and since the same compund is found, it mostly got absorbed into blood from intestines, and then filtered by blood.
also ‘Orellanine disrupts LLC-PK1 cell monolayers and inhibits membrane-bound alkaline phosphatase and cytosolic lactate dehydrogenase activity’
moving to Cyclopeptides - Phallotoxins and Amatoxins.
‘Amatoxins are able to inhibit mainly the activity of the RNA polymerase II (RNAP II) and also polymerase III (RNAP III), through α-amanitin and β-amanitin (respectively) (Diaz 2018[27]), resulting in decreases in mRNA content, causing deficient protein synthesis and cell death (Garcia et al., 2015[42]) (Figure 7(Fig. 7)).’
‘α-Amanitin has been shown to act synergistically with cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and this may be the final cause of liver failure.’
then the article goes into antidotes.
point being - all the toxic things (except partly the first one, which would be much slower in one of its pathways) do not require digestive metabolic pathways, just have to reach blood, and then time and amount is key.
Should i say on stuff that I do not have knowledge about - no, mostly. my first comment was mostly written in humor, the way the parent commenter wrote. but then the asked about it in followup, and they guessed it was a joke too. but i still replied and gave a plausible reasoning for my comment, mostly because that is kinda how i like my humor (be at least partially based on reality, and then change it). could i have done a better job? sure, but I do not think i did a gross injustice. most comments that are written are not refering or citing reearch articles. I had heard of how some mushroom toxins work ( i had heard of nephro one sspecifically), so based my response on that. as to where i got that - i dont know, probably some youtube video.
And finally - can you please turn down the sass just a notch. you seemingly were unhappy with my comment (possibly a seasoned forager, or a mushroom toxicology researcher), unhappy enough to downvote both comments. and someone also agreed with you, so they likely have similar knowledge i presume. given these facts, would you like to revisit your comment, or voting. If nothing, at least respond to this comment. I think my ego is fragile enough to reply to a single line comment with 500+ words just so i can say i was write, but i do not like being wrong.
What they mean is that there is no mushroom that will kill you from touch or even chewing and then spitting. Amanita Phaloides needs around 20g of dry mushroom to kill a healthy human. I chewed some before and spat it out just to know what it tastes like, the only reason I won’t send a video of me doing it is because I want to stay anonymous.
There are however some scleroderma that can cause conjunctivitis from touching them and then touching your eyes.
i beg your pardon for following rudeness, but did you read the above message? I completely trust you that you tasted a mushroom and spat it, to live and tell the story to me, but what you are saying is that a certain mushroom requires a certain amount to kill a person. firstly i do not know how was that number found (as in ingestion or directly shooting it’s extract to blood). when you ingest, you do not absorb anything, and there is a potential that directly exposed will require a lesser critical dose. and beyond that - toxins do not require digestive pathways.
the number is most likely calculated by measuring the amount present in a failed organ (in a dead patient mostly) and scaling to whole body and asking from surrounding folks how much they ate, and then matching with toxin concentration in mushroom. this lethal amount is not same for direct blood stream exposure.
you possibly want to say something like - mushrooms do not have enough to kill you just from touch or chew/spit, but not will. will suggests that there is some specific reason that either mushrooms can not produce enoug toxin to kill you from touch.
I would still stand by my original statment that it is stupid to expose contact or chew/spit. I am not saying you are stupid, I hav willingly tasted/sniffed many chemicals (not safe ones), but that is more of a decision (as in for learning purposes like you did for taste or for fun(that i do mostly)). It does not make that activity safe.
Up front, yeah, I absolutely didn’t read all of that. I am an amateur forager, and while I’m confident enough to sight identify common edibles and eat them, I don’t consider myself to “know about mushrooms” either. My problem with your comment is that it’s just as bad as AI giving advice; people might skim through and take it as fact without reading your little disclaimer, just like people skim through and take AI as fact without knowing better. That probably seems fine on the surface because your comment is just the opposite of the meme and, if followed, your advice will definitely prevent anyone getting poisoned. Unfortunately, it also will really discourage anyone interested in foraging. I’d hate for someone to miss out on a fun, healthy hobby because you can’t just keep your shit to your self.
Lemmy has communities where people who know what they’re talking about can give actual good advice. Please seek one out!