Wild mushroom warnings fail to prevent deaths in Calif.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. The deaths of two residents of a Northern California assisted living facility and the hospitalization of four others come despite warnings from health officials not to eat mushrooms picked in the wild.

As far back as October 2009, the California Department of Public Health issued a statement warning that eating wild mushrooms can cause serious illness or death.

"We get them almost every year where people go out picking wild mushrooms and wind up picking these deadly mushrooms and wind up in the hospital very sick in intensive care with a failing liver," Kathryn Meier of the California Poison Control System told CBS San Francisco station KPIX-TV.

(Scroll down to watch a report from KPIX-TV)

According to state data, there were more than 1,700 reported cases of mushroom ingestion in California in 2009 and 2010. They included 10 cases of serious poisoning and two deaths, including an 82-year-old Santa Barbara man who died after cooking wild mushrooms with his steak and a Lodi woman who died after eating mushrooms she had picked in a local park.

In the most recent incident, Placer County sheriff's officials said Barbara Lopes, 86, and Teresa Olesniewicz, 73, died after eating soup that had been prepared by a caregiver at the Gold Age Villa in Loomis.

• Officials say 2 dead, 4 sick from wild mushrooms

The caregiver who prepared the soup was among the six people sickened, Sheriff's Lt. Mark Reed said Saturday.

Deputies determined the deaths were an accident after they were called to the Gold Age Villa in Loomis on Friday, Reed said.

The caregiver "just didn't know" the mushrooms were poisonous, Reed told the Sacramento Bee.

The conditions of the four hospitalized were not known Sunday. Placer County officials referred questions about the incident to the California Department of Social Services, the agency that licenses senior care facilities.

Michael Weston, an official with the agency, said on Saturday the incident was under investigation, but released no additional details Sunday.

Department records show Gold Age Villa was licensed as a residential care facility for the elderly in March 2007, with a capacity of six residents, ages 60 and older.

Prior to this incident the last inspection of the facility was conducted on March 12, 2012, where it was cited for an excessive hot water temperature of 130 degrees. The deficiency was corrected and cleared, Weston said.

Repeated calls to Gold Age Villa by The Associated Press on Sunday were not returned.

[Sydonia56]

THEY may have the right in Cali to eat poison mushrooms if they so please, but no one being a paid care giver has the right to prepare and serve them to elderly residents of a facility responsible for their well being. They had 6 residents, and it resulted in the death of 2 innocent dependent people and 4 being so critically ill they are in the ICU and could possibly die because of someones ignorance. Take whatever risk you want for yourself, but be prepared for the consequences when you harm others. No difference in poisoned mushroom soup for the elderly and the poisoned Koolaid that Jim Jones force fed his followers, all of whom are the innocent believing they would be taken care of, not murdered. As an emergency health care professional we HAVE to know what mushroom it is to find an antidote, or death is imminent. How increditably stupid is this person? Charges should be brought "I didn't know" is not an excuse, it's all the more reason not to feed someone something wild that you know nothing about. My most sincere condolences to the families that lost their loved ones because of this idiot.

[rwsmith29456]

In California a person has the RIGHT to eat poisonous mushrooms if they so please.