According to investigative journalist Randall Fitzgerald, thousands of synthetic chemicals deemed safe by the government, regulatory agencies, manufacturers and even medical science are actually quite hazardous—and we're only beginning to glimpse the potential harmful effects they are having on our health and the environment. Dr. Oz talks with Randall, author of The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health , about his theory and how society can begin to eliminate the threat of toxins.

In 1906, the United States Congress enacted the Pure Food and Drug Act, legislation designed to set standards for the quality and safety of foods and medicines. Randall says this legislation marked the beginning of what he calls the "hundred-year lie" because the regulatory agencies that followed, such as the Food and Drug Administration, failed to adequately monitor what was truly safe. "We have all been guinea pigs in a vast chemical experiment, and based on the statistics—the health statistics—over the past 100 years, we can begin to see a correlation with the onslaught of synthetic chemicals in our lives that we've been impacted by those chemicals in the foods and medicines that we consume," he says.

Get Randall's list of practical steps you can take to protect yourself from illness.

Randall says as consumers, all we can do is try to limit our exposure by avoiding processed foods, eating as clean a diet as possible and monitoring the chemicals in the vaccines, prescription drugs, vitamins, cosmetics and personal care products that we use. He says the government can play an important role through public education, beginning with requiring manufacturers to follow truth in labeling. Initiating safety standards and legislation where products are constantly evaluated as well as increased social activism could also help reduce the threat posed by synthetic chemicals, he says.