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). All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable. Items are tested multiple times to confirm the test results for each component tested. Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February of 2023 (March 2023 print edition).

September 25, 2022 – Sunday
Home again, home again, jiggety jig…
Coming to you today from Portland, Oregon

Hello all!

Sorry this is a day late! I had a busy day yesterday helping a family in Southern California and then flying home to be with my family (and doing a grocery run on the way home from the airport!), so I haven’t had a moment to follow up on the newsletter from the other day.

In today’s newsletter, I have included (linked above) all of the articles that I share with folks on social media when they ask for “what to buy” product recommendations — for safer choices for their families. This is not any sort of attempt at an exhaustive list – there are many, many more articles on the Lead Safe Mama website discussing safer choices, but these are some of my top ones — with shopping lists, which is what so many readers ask for! (To learn how to search the website for all of the related articles to safer choices, click here.)

Of course, my strongest recommendations are the actual products I have purchased for my own family over the years (and which met or surpassed expectations, earning their place as “keepers”) – so the articles shared above include most of those items. Please load remote content for this newsletter and check out each of the images above — each of which is a link to an article that has direct links to many of the products I use in my home with my family (or products I otherwise recommend based on my “decade-plus” of testing consumer goods for toxicants for others).

The articles linked above include:

1. A video tour of my kitchen (well, “field kitchen”, such as it is these days during the period of reconstruction!) and links to all of the stuff in my kitchen
2. My guidelines for making safer choices for pots and pans for your family (with links at the bottom of the article to many safer choices that I recommend)
3. A fairly complete list of all the things I purchased to help set my son up in his new apartment for college two years ago
4. A link to the Lead Safe Mama shopping site (which ONLY lists Lead-free things – & so does not include items like the Instant Pot which have tested positive for Lead in one or more components!)
5. My piece with my favorite pans (that I use every day at home when I am home!)

I also created an overview on the website for the newsletter from the other day listing and linking to five of the pots and pans brands that I recommend avoiding. That piece is linked below, in case you want to share it with others who are not subscribed to this newsletter (or who are not on social media).

Thanks for being here!

I’m excited for the chance to “reset” with the Jewish High Holidays this week.

Upcoming Lead Safe Mama Travel Plans

Next week I head to the Seattle area to help a family there; I do have room in my schedule between Portland and Seattle if you (or someone you know) are in the area and would like to hire me for a one-on-one home consultation.
After that, my travels in October will be taking me to Sacramento, Los Angeles (again!), Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Baltimore / D.C., and North Carolina! I still have some availability in most of those locations as well. Note: This will be my last travel month (in the United States!) helping families – until at least February 2023.
In November I have an opportunity to do some writing and volunteer work in France (I am still working on pulling the pieces together for the trip as I write this, and hope to finalize my itinerary in the coming week); I will keep you all posted on that, too! Note: please let me know if you know anyone with a home or apartment (or chateau? lol!) in the south of France who might like to host me in my travels this winter (to help me keep costs down!) I would be happy to thank them for a home consultation while I am there.
And, finally… if you have been following my work for a long time, you may remember that my eldest son graduated from college (at the top of his class after five years as a presidential scholar!) during the pandemic (in May of 2020). His school (Berklee College of Music) has finally come around to agreeing to retroactively provide an in-person graduation ceremony for everyone in his class who missed this opportunity (at the time, they had – of necessity – created a digital/online graduation ceremony that year — which was not so great, given it is a performance-oriented music school!) This is super-exciting for us because Colescott is the first of our children to graduate from anything (since none of our children have done “traditional” high school), so this is the VERY FIRST GRADUATION in our nuclear family (even I skipped out on my college graduation 32 years ago — and my husband’s college career was even less conventional — featuring interdisciplinary scholarship at an eclectic assortment of impressive institutions, but no graduations! lol) So I will also (for personal reasons!) be in Boston on December 4, 2022 – and could be available to schedule a home consult or two in that area following that date. 🙂