Illness Traced to Tainted Shark : Health: After lunch at Union Rescue Mission, 19 residents and staff are taken to hospitals and another eight are treated at the Skid Row facility. Officials blame food poisoning on toxins in fish skin.

Nineteen people who ate shark for lunch at Los Angeles’ Union Rescue Mission were rushed to the hospital Friday with food poisoning, while eight others were treated and released outside the Skid Row charity house, Los Angeles City Fire Department officials said.

The shark was served to 43 mission staff members and transients taking part in live-in recovery programs for alcoholism and drug dependency, mission President Warren Currie said. The fish was not served in any of the 2,500 meals prepared each day for the homeless who come in off the street, Currie said.

“We’re extremely anguished,” Currie said as five city ambulances and four firetrucks waited outside the 102-year-old agency on South Main Street. “Fortunately, it did not affect any of the street people.”

Those who became ill after eating the fish suffered from nausea and, in at least one case, vomiting, according to mission spokesman Vince Newman, who ate the fish without becoming ill. Los Angeles County health officials blamed the illness on toxins in the skin of the sharks.

“My boss got real sick--her eyes were red and her skin was blotchy,” said mission staff member Deanna Gibson, who added that the symptoms lasted only half an hour. “I was hot and a little queasy to my stomach” for the same period of time, Gibson added.

Meanwhile, mission staff members were trying to pin down the source of the shark. The mission receives its food from a variety of sources, including charity food banks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and private donors, Currie said.

The incident was the first of its kind at the well-known homeless shelter, Newman said.