alt Hacker NewsJust don't eat any unless you're certain it's safe. You won't get poisoned just from touching any mushrooms.
One interesting gotcha that regularly kills people, is that there are some look-a-like species between Eurasia and North America, where one is edible and the other is poison. Apparently is fairly common in Washington state for eastern European immigrants (cultures where mushroom foraging is common) to die this way, because they eat something that looks familiar to them.
I believe you're talking about straw mushrooms (volvariella sp.) vs death caps (amanita phalloides). They are very similar to the untrained eye (and both can vary in appearance a lot from one spot to the next). One of the tells for amanitas it that they have an egg-like "volva" that you can find in the dirt just underneath the mushroom's stem if you dig a little. But volvariella species have this too... spore prints are one way to differentiate if you're patient.
But yeah, second that you can handle toxic mushrooms with no problems unless you swallow them.