Anyone worry about heavy metals in wild mushrooms?

[MagicalMedic]

I was going to try inoculating some public land with campestris spawn, but as I live in the city I thought I'd check if heavy metals are an issue. A quick search revealed that the concentration of heavy metals in fruiting bodies is very much dependent on species, and then environment / substrate, but there are conflicting reports as to which species are susceptible. One site said for example that agaricus campestris didn't accumulate significant amounts of metals, while wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicinal_mushrooms#Heavy_metals - indicates it'd definitely be an issue.

I was wondering if you guys ever consider this if you're harvesting various species in areas where you'd have reason to think there's probably heavy metal contamination, like lead in the city or arsenic near old goldmining areas?

Does anyone know if it's really worth worrying about if you don't eat them often? 'hyper-accumulation of heavy metals' sounds distinctly uncool in the context of a fungi you may be planning on eating

[NSF]

I've always been wary of fungi in road verges. I don't know why but i always thought they'd gather pollutants from the soil and concentrate them in the fruiting body. No idea why i think this way.

But i've also heard red bruising fruit bodies have different concentrations to yellow bruising bodies.

If you wouldn't eat fish caught in local rivers, then maybe don't eat fungi grown in local parks.

[tripsis]

See the list in Mycelium Running for species which are known to bioaccumulate heavy metals. Agaricus campestris is listed there.

[MagicalMedic]

NSF you're completely right in thinking that way, you've probably read it somewhere in the past - some mushrooms can concentrate toxic metals to tens or hundreds of times the concentration of the metal in their growing medium (see the original link). Good point regarding fish, seems a reasonable analogy and I would never eat from polluted waterways.

Thanks tripsis, I searched through the forums and it sounds like a good read. I've checked a few more reliable references in the last hour too and there's little doubt that campestris accumulate a lot of lead etc relative to their growth medium, I can't find the source that said they don't but the dude who wrote it (on his website, not in a forum) hadn't referenced his claim and must be pretty fucking lazy with his info to get that wrong.

One of the reference studies I'm looking at repeatedly spells agaricus campestris as 'agricus campestris' and says it is a toxic non-edible. WTF? Agricus campestris is a misspelling rather than a different species right? If google can't find it surely it doesn't exist.

"The level of the iron was very high in toxic

mushrooms species as Amanita phalloides, Hypholoma pudorinus, Agricus campestris..."

also

"All the wild toxic species, Amanita phalloides, Hypholoma pudorinus, Hypholoma

fasciculare and Agricus campestris accumulated Co and Ti from soil in low concentrations."

but earlier in the paper:

'Agaricus

campestris

Basidiomycetes/

Agaricomycetidae

Agaricaceae Soil Non-edible, white'

From: "Evaluation of essential elements and heavy metal levels in fruiting bodies of

wild mushrooms and their substrate by EDXRF spectrometry and FAA

spectrometry" Radulsecu et al

Edited October 9, 2011 by MagicalMedic

[Zen Peddler]

I once ate shaggy manes I found growing on fairly new treated pine bark. I thought I felt kinda crook for the4 rest of the day but it might have been my mind.

[MagicalMedic]

I once ate shaggy manes I found growing on fairly new treated pine bark. I thought I felt kinda crook for the4 rest of the day but it might have been my mind.

 

Holy mother of god dude.. shaggy mane can concentrate arsenic to 20X that found in the substrate; when that substrate is bark which has recently been treated with (very likely) chromated copper arsenate, that's potentially really, really bad for you. Not saying you experienced acute poisoning that day but arsenic is nasty shit.

On the other hand the timber is treated with arsenic and copper because they're fungicidal so maybe they weren't there in high concentrations. Pretty ill-advised though I'd say, to say the least

[Zen Peddler]

I was hungry...