Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s 2023 Goals!

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Introduction (for those new to this website):

Tamara Rubin is a federal-award-winning independent advocate for consumer goods safety and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children, her sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005. Since 2009 Tamara has been using XRF testing (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. Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February of 2023.

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January 1, 2023 — Sunday

This past year (2022) was absolutely amazing! It was the best year ever for Lead Safe Mama, LLC — in so many ways (all the ways, really!) we saw what was truly possible if we focused on our goals (specifically meeting goals for readership and engagement in the outreach work, each day and each month)! I will be sharing a separate piece about all of the accomplishments in 2022, but in the meantime — while it is still January 1st — I thought it would be a good moment to jot down and publish some of our bigger goals for the coming year.

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Our “Top 10” goals for the year are below:

Goal #1 of 10

First and foremost, we are working to build a movement here — to really move the needle on childhood Lead-poisoning prevention, so our primary goals are always focused on increasing readership, engagement, and public participation in this activism. Our primary way to measure the success of our efforts to increase engagement (in the international conversation for childhood Lead-poisoning prevention, and consumer goods safety) is to track our readership statistics here on the website (which is easy to do, given all of the available tools online). Thanks to JetPack Statistics (which we have installed on the back-end of this website), we know that in 2022, we had 5,320,969 (five million three hundred and twenty thousand, nine hundred and sixty-nine!) unique page views on the website over the course of the year! Just a few days before the close of the 2022 calendar year we had doubled our readership of the previous year, 2021 — which saw 2,628,602 unique page views for the year (see chart below for details). Knowing that we again, as we have in the past, have the capacity for this phenomenal level of growth in our readership and impact around the world, we are continuously emboldened — therefore we are setting a readership goal for 2023 at (again) twice what we achieved in 2022! If we meet this ambitious goal, we will see a total of 10,641,938 page views in one year (I think we really can do it with the momentum this work currently has)! Goal: 10,641,938 unique page views in 2023.

• • 10,641,938 unique page views would translate to:
    • a goal of an average of 886,829 unique page views each month or
    • a goal of an average of 29,156 unique page views each day
    • a goal of an average of 1,214 unique page views each hour
  • Our “interim” goal will be to continue to strive to reach our sustainability goal of 20,000 page views each day, for all 365 days of the year. Reaching this goal would put us at 7,300,000 page views for the year, which seems well within reach, having passed 5,300,000 in 2022.

Continue reading below the image.
Click the image to see it full-sized.

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Goal #2 of 10

In 2022 we had 1,766,348 unique individual readers visit this website (per Google Analytics — check out the graph below). Along with the goal of doubling readership in  2023 as measured by page views, we also have the goal of doubling readership in 2023 as measured by unique visitors to the site. Doubling our readership in 2023 would mean reaching (and hopefully passing) 3,532,696 unique individual visitors to the site. GOAL: 3,353,696 unique individual readers here at LeadSafeMama.com/ TamaraRubin.com in 2023.

Continue reading below the image.
Click the image to see it full-sized.

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Goal #3 of 10

Our Instagram goal for 2022 was to pass 20,000 Instagram followers. We closed out 2022 with just about 24,000 Instagram followers — this surpassed our 2022 goal by a good margin! We had previously set the 2023 goal for Instagram as reaching 50,000 followers by the end of 2023. I am going to keep it at 50,000 for now but I think we will keep in mind a stretch goal of 100,000 by the end of the year. It just seems like that is truly possible with the growth in reach, impact, and followers/readership we have seen in these last two months of 2022. Goal: 100,000 Instagram followers by the end of 2023.

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Goal #4 of 10

In-person work… In 2022, in addition to the in-person work we did in the United States, we had the opportunity to do some advocacy work in France and Canada. For 2023, we are going to work toward doing in-person advocacy work (outreach events, consumer goods testing, speaking engagements, etc.) in at least three additional countries. Given the current inquiries, the places we are considering include Dubai, England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand. We already have plans for returning to France and Canada as well in 2023. Goal: continued in-person outreach work/advocacy work in the United States, Canada, and France; alongside at least three additional countries (to be determined).

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Goal #5 of 10

In 2022 we did three public outreach events in collaboration with nonprofits/public organizations:

1. w/ Stanford University in Palo Alto, California
2. w/ Peach Durham in Asheville, North Carolina
3. w/ Astoria Park Alliance in Queens, New York

In 2023 we plan to expand our outreach events in the United States (back to pre-pandemic levels), with at least 10 community collaborative outreach events around the country. Goal: 10 in-person community collaborative outreach events in the United States in 2023.

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Goal #6 of 10

Several years ago we came up with an idea for an installation art piece that would be a way to collect (and store) smashed Leaded dishes (which would help to get them out of circulation/use in people’s homes). This past year we did the CAD design work for a small (4-foot cubed) prototyped version of this piece and expanded the concept to include filming videos of the art piece in action (filming videos of popular vintage and antique dishes being smashed) and sharing those videos on TikTok as a way of driving awareness to the issue regarding Lead in vintage and modern consumer goods. (You can read a little more about this concern here.) We are currently getting bids from fabrication companies to help us build the first prototype of this piece. Goal: Get the first prototype of this piece built no later than June of 2023 and film no fewer than 20 videos of the unit in action. Stretch Goal: Film 100+ of these videos by the end of 2023.

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Goal #7 of 10

In 2022 we came up with the idea of running a print PSA campaign in the New York City Subway system to bring attention to the issue of Lead in modern baby bottles (you can read more about that here). This campaign will cost between $40,000 and $100,000 depending on the scope of the campaign (the number of print panels we have posted throughout the NYC subway system). Our goal is to have a minimum of 2,000 panels printed. This PSA campaign should raise enough (through increased readership on the website — directly generated by the campaign) to cover the cost of the campaign. Goal: Secure funding (via loan or grant) and implement this campaign before the end of 2023.

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Goal #8 of 10

In 2022 alone we published 509 (!!!!!) posts and articles here on this website! How the heck did we do that?! Wow. That’s a hard one to beat. Given our focus is on the quality of information (not quantity), we are hereby setting a goal of publishing 350 new posts and articles with information in 2023. If we exceed that… great! However, I won’t anticipate this with all the other goals we have planned (as noted above). As of publishing this article, there are a total of 3,571 posts on this website. Goal: 350 new posts and articles here on LeadSafeMama.com/ TamaraRubin.com in 2023. 

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Goal #9 of 10

In 2022 the Lead Safe Mama, LLC community was responsible for three product recalls (through the violation reports we submitted to the Consumer Product Safety Commission). In 2023 we are going to focus more on submitting violation reports than we have in previous years (including encouraging our readership to submit violation reports for toxic products) and we hope to get at least one product recall pushed through the CPSC each month of this calendar year. Given the significant delay from when we submitted each of the products for recall this past year to the time the recall was actually announced, we are going to focus much of our attention in January 2023 on filing CPSC violation notices in hopes that these products (which we have already written about here on the website) will get formally/publicly recalled over the course of the coming year. Goal: No fewer than 12 CPSC product recalls generated by the Lead Safe Mama, LLC community in 2023.

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Goal #10 of 10

Last but not least, we have a goal of successfully concluding our Federal Civil Rights case, in which we are suing the State of Oregon for multiple counts of Civil Rights violations that interfered with the trajectory and impact of this advocacy work. A successful outcome will include both a public admission of guilt by the bad actors within the State of Oregon Department of Justice as well as fines and punishments for the people and agencies involved. A successful outcome would also include a shift in policy and regulations (setting a legal precedent in the Federal courts) so these types of illegal actions by the State cannot be perpetrated against other citizens (in the State of Oregon or elsewhere in the United States) in the future. Along with this goal, we anticipate that meeting the other goals (#1 through #9 above) will put us in a position of repaying (in full) all the amazing people who have loaned funds to help us through this legal battle that has now been going on for SEVEN years! (Maybe 7 is our lucky number on this one?) Goal: To conclude our Federal Civil Rights case in our favor.

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Bonus Goals (not likely to happen in 2023, but we will work in this direction):

1. To get the use of Lead (Lead paint, Leaded sealing dots, etc.) in or on baby bottles and other baby feeding products (breast milk storage, reusable baby food storage, baby cups, etc.) outlawed. This includes no possible loopholes or exceptions (we understand it may take longer than a year to get this implemented as federal legislation — which is why we are not setting this as a potentially achievable goal for 2023 — but more a ‘bonus’ goal we will hopefully achieve sooner rather than later).
2. To get legislation passed requiring second-hand stores/antique stores/etc. to separately mark individual vintage ware pieces as potentially toxic (including online markets for these products — like eBay).
3. To get the Lead Safe Mama TV series (in which we film our home consultations with families and cut together two home visits per episode to share with viewers) funded and produced. (This will likely be a YouTube series.)
4. To get clay-based kitty litters outlawed given the human and animal health impacts.
5. To get clay-based tooth powders and toothpaste outlawed given human health impacts.
6. To get our traveling museum exhibit (of toxic consumer goods, vintage and new) scheduled with at least five museums around the country.
7. To have the work of the Lead Safe Mama advocacy community cited in at least 10 major news publications in 2023.
8. To get major news media coverage of the Lead-in-baby-bottles issue.
9. Oh yeah… to finish my film (and my book!) as well as get a mainstream distribution of the project 😉

That’s all I can think of right now (it’s now after 1:00 a.m. on January 2nd — as I have been adding to this list of goals over the past two hours!) but I reserve the right to update and add to these goals at any time! 😉

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