16 mushroom poisonings notified in Poland in 2025

The bulletin Infectious diseases and poisonings in Poland in 2024, published by the National Institute of Public Health NIH and the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate, keeps a separate line for toxic effects of noxious substances eaten as food: mushroom poisonings, ICD-10 code T62.0. In 2024, 13 cases were recorded, an incidence of 0.035 per 100,000 population. Ten people were hospitalised, 76.9 per cent of those notified. The year before, the figures were 13 cases and 12 hospitalisations.

The most important information, however, sits in the footnote below the table: registration is incomplete. The authors themselves mark the data as not covering every event. Cases enter the table through mandatory notification, and a large share of poisonings end at an emergency department or in a call to a toxicology centre without any notification being generated. The number therefore measures the flow of information through the surveillance system, not how many people in Poland were poisoned by mushrooms.

The breakdown by voivodeship supports that reading. Notifications came from nine voivodeships, and in most of them 100 per cent of recorded patients were hospitalised. It is hard to imagine a clearer signal that what gets registered are the most severe cases — the ones that reached a ward anyway — while milder poisonings do not exist in the statistics at all.

For a reader the conclusion runs against intuition. Thirteen cases a year does not mean the risk is negligible — it means this number cannot be used to judge risk. Data from the toxicology information centres, which people call without filling in a form, serve that purpose better. The "incomplete registration" footnote is the most honest part of the table and should be quoted alongside the figure.

More notifications are not a complete poisoning total

The NIPH-NIH and Chief Sanitary Inspectorate bulletin for 1 January–31 December 2025 lists 16 mushroom poisonings, or 0.04 per 100,000 residents. Its comparison column for 2024 gives 13 and 0.03 per 100,000. A difference of three notifications is small and does not establish an epidemiological trend.

The table’s crucial footnote says that registration is incomplete. These values describe cases reaching the notification system rather than every exposure and symptom in the population. The 2025 release is provisional; final annual publications may apply further validation.