2023 NYC Subway PSA Campaign: Additional Ideas

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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). 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).

 

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Published: May 30, 2023 — Tuesday
Updated: June 14, 2023 – Wednesday

We are seeking $120,000 in funding to expand and continue
the Lead Safe Mama, LLC New York City Subway PSA Campaign.

The current Lead Safe Mama New York City Subway PSA campaign for Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention and Consumer Goods Safety has cost us close to $100,000 in total so far (for administrative, management, coordination, and photography; including about $75,000 in direct fees paid to the agency in charge of advertising for the New York City Subways). Miraculously, we were able to raise the funds for this campaign in 2023, after seeking funds for this campaign for more than two years.

The next steps include goals of both:

1. expanding the footprint of the campaign — printing and installing more panels (1,000 to 2,000 more than the initial 2,000 printed and installed on the subways during the week following 5/30/2023) — and
2. extending the duration of the campaign (beyond the initial four weeks that were covered by this first $90,000 infusion). Ideally we would like to raise enough funds to extend the campaign through the end of the year, or at least through the end of October 2023.

After the necessary initial infusion of funding that helped us get this PSA campaign started, there is now a possibility that at least some of the expansion and continuation of the PSA campaign could be self-funding at some point in the future — through income earned via Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s online advertising contract (the annoying ads you see here on this site) as a result of increased traffic and exploration on the website in direct response to the PSA campaign. Only time will tell if this will happen. As of this moment (6/14/2023 update) the expansion of the PSA campaign is not yet possible as a self-funded endeavor, as a result, we are seeking additional corporate sponsorships of the project to help ensure our ability to continue and expand the PSA campaign.

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June 4, 2023 Update: While the response to the campaign has been phenomenal so far (in terms of the public comments and feedback we have received), the campaign has not yet precipitated an increase in readership on the site (see graph below). We did have a spike in readership on 5/30/23 — the launch day of the campaign, but that turned out to be traffic from another source.

We have several specific ideas for panels to include in the expansion of this campaign, and wanted to take a moment to share a few of these here with you so that:

1. these ideas are expressed and shared with you, our community, and group mind, and
2. if someone reading this happens to be in a position to financially support the project with the $120,000 in additional funding needed for “phase 2” (as did the corporate sponsor who contributed the $90,000 we needed for the launch of this exciting campaign!), that potential sponsor would have a sense of what vision and actions their financial contribution might support!

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Some of additional ideas for expanding the PSA campaign:

I am going to start here with just writing out the basic concepts for some of our future ideas for this project. We would love for this PSA campaign to continue through (and culminate with) Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention messaging saturating the New York City Subways for Lead Poisoning Prevention Month in October! (& if funding permits, even for it to extend through the 2023 winter holiday season.) As we have time to work on the graphics for these additional ideas, we will update this post with the additional mock-ups of the planned graphics. Here are the panels we are working on (in case we secure the additional funding to continue / expand this PSA campaign):

1. A panel showing vintage Tupperware (and the contaminants: Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Arsenic, etc.).
2. A panel showing vintage Corelle dishes (Patterns: Butterfly Gold, Crazy Daisy/ Spring Blossom Green, etc.).
3. A panel with images of vintage Fisher Price toys and toxicant concerns.
4. A panel with images of vintage Pyrex.
5. A panel about Lead-painted Pyrex glass measuring cups.
6. A panel about Lead-painted milk bottles.
7. A panel about Dr. Felicia Rabito’s study, which demonstrated that trace levels of Lead in the blood can cause significant impacts on fertility and birth outcomes.
8. A panel explaining that 1 in 3 children in America today has had an unsafe level of Lead in their blood in their lifetime.
9. A series of four panels with portraits of the widely diverse/universal, true “demographic” of mothers of Lead-poisoned children — with the words “I am a mother of a Lead-poisoned child.”

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Estimated Budget to Continue & Expand The PSA Campaign

• $50,000 to continue the current campaign for a second 4-week period
• $45,000 to add 4 more images (1000 more panels) to the campaign
• $3,000 additional photography 
• $2,500 additional copy editing costs
• $8,500 additional campaign administrative costs
• $5,000 additional social media support costs for the campaign
• $1,500 additional website related costs (related hosting, security, design)
• $4,500 related operational overhead (testing instrumentation / equipment, insurance, storage, legal, etc.)
• = $120,000 estimated total costs

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading!

I will update and expand upon this post periodically as I have the time.

Tamara Elise Rubin
Owner — Lead Safe Mama, LLC
Mother of Lead-poisoned children

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