How many people in the US do you think actually forage wild plants and fungi?
The number of hospitalizations is somewhere around 10k a year. For ~1500 of those it's at least life threatening. ~100ish end up with organ failure or permanent neurological problems. ~10 of them die. That's every year.
That might be mildly dangerous compared to other hobbies, but if you isolate for actual practitioners of the hobby, suddenly those numbers look extremely dangerous.
Where are you getting your data? Is this a specific country/worldwide/what? If you're just talking about the US, a quick Google search shows your numbers are off by a few orders of magnitude. This article from the CDC estimated 100 hospitalizations for mushrooms in the US in 2016: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010a1.htm
Foraging for mushrooms is not dangerous if you know what you're doing and stick to easily identified mushrooms that aren't easily confused with poisonous varieties.
AAPCC annual reports, linked to from an actual mushroom foraging guide.
Also I said plants and mushrooms. Not specifically mushrooms. AAPCC doesn't track mushrooms separately and I would consider the CDC to not be the authority on poisoning -- their specialty is diseases.
Here's the relevant section from the 2023 National Poison Data System:
https://i.imgur.com/vIXenG8.png
8294 case mentions, 3039 hospitalizations.
for outcomes check the table.
Huh, that is quite interesting, thank you.
Looks like that includes the hallucinogenic mushrooms, which leads to 2139 case mentions and 1146 hospitalizations a year.
