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Who might this be a good opportunity for?

1. You just moved and need help making safer choices for your new home.
   • It might be fun to sign up for a subscription for 6 months to help with a transition like this!
2. You just inherited a house full of your grandmother’s stuff!
   • It might be useful to sign up for a 2 or 3-month subscription to help you decide what to keep, what to toss, and what might be worth selling (with a Lead disclaimer!).
3. You are having a baby!
   • It would be fun to be part of this group in the two or three months before and after giving birth — to help you with decisions involving your baby’s home and environment during this important time. A 6-month subscription to this group might also be a nice gift to give an expecting mama!
4. You are renovating an older home and need coaching through the process.
   • You would probably benefit from being in a group with this level of specificity and focus for the entire duration of your remodel (and perhaps the planning phase as well) — especially since little unexpected questions can come up practically daily during a renovation of a pre-1978 home.
5. You are an empty-nester looking for help downsizing.
   • A two or three-month subscription could provide you with a lot of guidance regarding what is safe to let the grandkids play with, and which things shouldn’t be passed on. Getting rid of the extra stuff you have now (when looking through the specific lens of the work of Lead Safe Mama) will simplify your upcoming move (and help protect your family!).
6. You are looking for sources of Lead in your home because someone in the family tested positive.
   • In my work, I often find unexpected Lead exposure sources when other resources (county health department representatives; independent hazard assessors) have not been able to find the source of a child’s exposure. I can usually do this in a single-day on-site home visit, but a month’s subscription to this group might go a long way in helping you to identify the source without the cost of having me travel to your part of the world (although I love traveling, and I am open for any work-related travel, as long as my costs are covered!).
7. You have OCD or anxiety around Lead and need help gauging/ contextualizing concerns (with science-backed evidence).
   • If you have OCD or anxiety around the issue of exposure to Lead and other toxic metals, in addition to working with your mental health care provider, it might be helpful to have someone (like me) on hand to get you quick, science-based answers to help you distinguish/ gauge what might be a legitimate concern vs. a concern maybe based on misplaced or exaggerated fear — mis-contextualized, or excessive/obsessive ideation — rather than a true toxics-exposure concern.

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Originally Published: July 17, 2021 — Saturday
Updated: March 2023

Before joining the subscriber group, we request you read this full article. If you click the button at the bottom to join the group, it is with the understanding that you agree to the terms of participation outlined below.

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The conundrum: How can I earn a living doing what I do? (So I can keep doing it!)

As many of you know, I am hopping on and off social media 10 to 12 hours a day (usually more), every day — checking in and answering questions for as many families as I can. When I am not on social media, I am writing here on the website to answer questions in a more thorough format so others will have a place to easily find the answers to those questions in the future. When I am not working on the website, I am testing items (sent to me by families) for reporting on new articles on the website, or I am working directly with families helping them in their homes (sometimes via phone or zoom, too). 

• As many of you also know, the total money earned from all Lead Safe Mama, LLC endeavors is not yet enough to both cover the costs of the work (including paying the legal team, repaying loans that were made to help cover costs related to the six-year legal battle, AND paying myself [Tamara Rubin] a living wage in exchange for the more-than-full-time energy I put into this work).
• There are currently over 24,300 members in the main Lead Safe Mama Facebook group — and it (long ago) passed the point where I could answer all of the questions myself, let alone read every comment in every thread.

We decided we needed to shift the paradigm a bit so I can both continue personally helping people for free when I have available time and ALSO earn a living (so I can feed my family, pay my mortgage, AND also pay the legal team until we cross the finish line in our civil rights case!). This is a balancing act, but I think it is possible through implementing a subscriber-based system for those readers who have a lot of questions (more urgent questions) to get their questions answered quickly, efficiently — and directly by me!

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I am committed that the Lead Poisoning Prevention with Lead Safe Mama group on Facebook (the main group) will continue to grow (and hopefully, thrive!). To help make this happen, here’s the plan moving forward:

1. I have hired two part-time helpers to help moderate the main Lead Safe Mama Facebook group. (There is also a handful of volunteers helping there on a regular basis.)
2. I will remain in the large Facebook group and continue to answer questions whenever I have time — but I will no longer be able to chime in every time I am tagged (since I have not been able to keep up with that for a while now). 
3. I have created a smaller Facebook group: Lead Safe Mama Subscribers.
4. To be added to this new group, you will need to join as a paid subscriber — by setting up a recurring monthly payment of $52.35.
   • This can be set up as an automatic monthly payment on PayPal (using the button below).
   • If you do not have a PayPal account, we can set up a monthly payment for you with your credit card (using PayPal’s processing system for those without PayPal accounts).
5. Rates are subject to change and any updated/new rates will be published here on this page as they have been since we started this group. 
6. There will be a cap of 200 members in the group at any time.
7. You can subscribe for a month, three, six, or with no end date — whatever you like.
8. If your subscription payment is not received (or if you let us know you will be canceling), you will be removed from the group on (or shortly after) your renewal date, but you are invited to renew your subscription at any time at whatever the current renewal rate is.
9. When monthly subscription rates for the group go up, as long as you are a current/active member of the group (as long as your payment has not lapsed and you have consistently paid monthly at your original rate), your monthly rate will be grandfathered-in, at the rate you had when you most recently joined or renewed.
10. Our next anticipated rate increase will be on July 1, 2023. On that date, the monthly rate to participate in this group will be $100.35. (We had previously announced a rate increase to $60 [and change] as of January 1, 2023, but we are skipping that bump at this time.)

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Lead Safe Mama Subscriber Group: Membership Perks

• Members in this group will be able to ask questions of me directly (and can expect me to personally take the time to answer, in short order!). I will commit to checking in on the group at least four times a day, at least five days a week to see if folks have questions needing answers.

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We are also working up to adding in the following additional perks

• Periodic group Zoom conferences (which any member of the subscriber group can join at no extra cost)! 
• Discounted rates for other opportunities and special offerings (for example, if I [re-]open the opportunity for folks to send in boxes of things for testing, it will only be an opportunity for members of this group).
• In-person Lead Safe Mama subscriber meet-ups in major metropolitan areas that coincide with my travel on regular travel months (January, April, and October of each year).

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NOTES/Disclaimers:

• NOT a one-on-one consultation or hazard inspection. Becoming a paid subscriber in this way is not a service that is meant to replace a one-on-one home consultation or one-on-one Zoom call — nor is it (or any of my work) ever meant to replace a formal hazard inspection or home inspection by a certified inspector.
• One-on-one consultations may still be more appropriate for some situations: While I will do my best to answer questions in this forum, there may be some complex questions or timelines for inquiry that warrant more detailed and/or urgent responses and might be optimally addressed by a phone/ Zoom consult, or an in-person home consult.
• NOT a doctor: This group will also not dispense medical advice, as we are not affiliated with any medical practitioners — although we certainly may be able to help you better communicate your concerns with your medical providers (and we may be able to provide you with up-to-date articles and scientific studies to share with your medical providers, as appropriate). I have often been hired by health departments and hospitals to do presentations to the public — but also to do presentations specifically to medical staff, where attendees (including medical providers and educators) get CEUs (Continuing Education Credits) to participate; so I have quite a bit of experience making this new information approachable for those in the medical professions who may not yet be up-to-date on the latest science around Lead poisoning.

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As always, thanks for reading!

• Here’s the button to start your subscription payments.

• Here’s the link to request to join the group  (you will be approved once we have confirmed receipt of your first payment).
• My e-mail if you have questions: TamaraRubin@mac.com

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Short-term Goal: $6,000

We came up with this idea as we needed to raise enough to pay our legal team’s retainer (the retainer I need to replenish periodically is normally in the $6,000 to $10,000 range). To meet this particular goal monthly we would only need to have 117 paid subscribers @ $52.35 a month. Meeting this goal would also make the same amount of money available every month when we need to replenish his retainer (until the case is eventually over)! Our current active monthly subscriptions total just over $900 a month (as of March 2023).

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Why $52.35 (& then $100.35)

1. Having a specific, unusual amount in my accounting system for subscribers (different than what others might normally contribute or pay for services) helps me run searches in the system — making it easier for me to quickly find all of the current subscribers each month!
2. The monthly payment when this group started was $35.42 a month. We have since bumped it up to $52.35 a month (as of 7/1/2022). The next bump will be to $100.35 on July 1, 2023. The membership in the group will always be capped at 200 people. Note: if you start a subscription now, you will be “grandfathered in” at the current rate if you continue as an active subscriber past those dates.
3. The short-term goal is to reach $6,000 a month — and the long-term goal would be for the income from this group to be part of a sustainable business model for Lead Safe Mama, LLC, possibly earning as much as $10,000 a month (if we approach 200 group members) to help support our work helping families.
4. As of this March 2023 update, we currently have 24 paid subscribers who make a monthly gift in support of this work. Not all of these folks have chosen to be part of the group. The group is currently a small community of 30 active members (with 20 subscribers and a handful of volunteers & moderators who periodically help to answer questions). Total monthly subscriber income (3/27/2023) is $927.66.

Thanks for considering supporting this work in this way.

By being one of (up to) 200 people to pay for my time (in exchange for a bit more of my focus and attention), you will also be helping me to continue to be in a position to help families in crisis for free when they are unable to pay (including spending time each day answering questions in the larger group!).

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama

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For those new to this website:

Tamara Rubin is a multiple-federal-award-winning independent advocate for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety, and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children (two of her sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005). Since 2009, Tamara has been using XRF technology (a scientific method used by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) to test consumer goods for toxicants (specifically heavy metals — including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Antimony, and Arsenic). Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February of 2023 (March 2023 print edition).