Sue McDonald- Environmental Crusader
by Vicki Wolf

Not long after Sue McDonald moved into her new house she had to have her uterus removed. Six weeks later she had an emergency operation to remove her gall bladder. Her allergies got worse and she began gaining weight, even though she hadn’t changed her diet and was exercising more than ever. “It never occurred to me that it was my house,” she says.

Six years later, McDonald moved into another, larger home and renovated it throughout. Soon she began experiencing headaches, she developed sensitivities to fragrances and she went from a size 6 to a size 10 in two years. Her allergies worsened, she began suffering from extreme fatigue and her general health declined.

After several years in this house, McDonald inexplicably began experiencing headaches with unremitting pain so severe that she contemplated suicide. She couldn’t sleep and was becoming hypersensitive to virtually everything in her environment. The mystery began to unravel one morning when McDonald put her hand on the kitchen door and noticed it was oily. She remembered instructing a new maid to use teak oil sparingly on furniture in the bedroom and study; it now appeared that the oil had been used throughout the house…every week for four weeks, as it turned out.

McDonald rushed down to her Baylor doctor, who had been trying to decipher the cause of her symptoms. “It’s the teak oil,” she told him. Her doctor instructed her to move out of the house immediately and referred her to a doctor outside of Houston who was knowledgeable about environmental illness.

When McDonald called the doctor’s office, the nurse told her that she would have to wait two weeks for an appointment. McDonald explained that she really needed to see the doctor sooner than that. The nurse told her that all of the patients waiting to see this particular doctor were as sick as she was, and that it would be at least a two-week wait. McDonald soon began to realize that millions of people in the United States are suffering from illnesses related to environmental toxins.

It was the teak oil that first appeared as the reason for McDonald’s worsening health problems, but she says it can be any number of other products or materials that sends someone over the edge. Daily exposure to chemicals in the environment gradually builds up in the body. One exposure too many can be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Nine months later, McDonald began to recover and moved back into her house. She had more problems: When the heat in the house was turned on, she became ill from the offgassing of the plastic in the air-conditioning ducts; the chlorine in the tap water burned her skin when she showered, even after installing a water filtration system. At one point she resorted to spending 24 hours a day outdoors on a cotton cot by the pool and having her husband rinse her with Mountain Valley Spring Water after a shower.

By removing the majority of synthetic chemicals from her indoor environment, eating organic food, drinking spring water only out of glass bottles and dressing in natural fibers, McDonald began to get well. She became obsessed with learning more about environmental illness and its causes. She read until she became allergic to the chlorine and ink in the paper…and then she put on a gas mask and kept reading (until she became allergic to the carbon in the gas mask). McDonald estimates that she has now read approximately 200 books on the subject of environmental illness.

“I became angry,” McDonald says. “There is so much information that is not getting out to the public.” She says what concerns her most is that no longer is the U.S. government of, by and for the people. Instead, it is of, by and for industry. “Industry spends an obscene amount of money to keep these products on the market.”

Today McDonald is crusading to inform the public about the hazards of chemicals in food and water (including packaging materials), in household products, clothing, personal care products, plastics and building materials. And she has some good news: “You find that by going through this journey and cleaning up your environment you can get your health back.”

McDonald says that while most people are aware that an unhealthy diet can lead to health problems, very few know about the problems that synthetic chemicals pose. “There are more than 85,000 synthetic chemicals in the environment and very few of these are adequately tested for safety. When the molecules of these chemicals combine with each other, the result is literally billons of chemical combinations.” No one knows the effects these combinations have on the human body. However, McDonald points out that cancer, childhood learning disabilities and developmental problems, obesity, infertility, asthma, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and sleep disorders all have been linked to chemicals in the environment.

After hearing one of McDonald’s lectures, you will change the way you shop for clothes. McDonald says polyester actually produces formaldehyde as the fibers degrade and the formaldehyde is then absorbed through the skin. Even natural fabrics, like cotton and linen, are often treated with formaldehyde to give them a crisper look and feel. And wearing lycra is like wrapping yourself in plastic. “People don’t realize these chemicals get into your bloodstream and are capable of causing great harm, even at extremely low levels. You are the chemicals you live with,” she says.

McDonald is allergic to synthetic fragrances and is concerned that most people don’t know that when the label on a product such as a laundry detergent includes “fragrance” that this word could represent hundreds, if not thousands, of petrochemicals. She says most colognes and perfumes today are made out of petroleum products and are usually 95-97 percent petrochemicals. The fragrance industry is totally unregulated and is not required to test any of the chemicals that are used in fragrances.

Fabric softeners and other fragrant household products may contain hormone-disrupting chemicals that can affect thyroid absorption and cause weight gain along with many other very serious health problems. She says it’s interesting to watch people begin to lose weight when they stop using fabric softeners and fragranced products.

McDonald and her husband, Alan, own AMAC Water Products and distribute Mountain Valley Spring Water, available in glass bottles and recommended by environmental illness doctors for its purity and mineral content. (E.I. doctors consider glass bottles critical.) They decided to buy the Houston-area distributorship after using the water and realizing that their health improved. (As did the health of their dog.)

There is no carpeting in their office, and the furniture, including the chairs, is made of wood. (Upholstered furniture contains formaldehyde.) Employees at the company must agree not to wear synthetic clothing or fragrances, and they can’t use fabric softeners. These policies were originally instituted to protect McDonald’s health. However, most of the employees lose weight and feel better after working there a few months. “It’s a very productive group,” she says. “No one is falling asleep at their desk.”

To begin to detox your environment and your body, McDonald advises that you:

• Don’t use plastic containers for storing food and water—glass is the only safe container.
• Buy organic foods when you have the choice.
• Don’t wear synthetic fabrics. Look for cotton, linen, silk, wool or flax.
• Read the labels on EVERYTHING and avoid petrochemical ingredients in personal care products, laundry detergents and household cleaning products. (She suggests baking soda, vinegar and water, and Bon Ami for cleaning.)
• Don’t use fabric softeners. (McDonald says fabric softeners are the worst product on the market designed for personal use.)

McDonald offers an introductory seminar on health effects of chemicals in the environment titled “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You” and an advanced seminar on what to do to avoid environmental illness. Each four-hour seminar is offered monthly. For more information, go to www.amacwater.com or call 713-937-8630.

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