Consumer Reports Magazine Covered the Work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC Again: Toxic Cassava Flour Products

Published: May 7, 2025 

Hi all! The link to today’s new Consumer Reports article (on cassava flour Lead contamination) is below. I am so thankful to the team at Consumer Reports for taking the initiative (in collaboration with Lead Safe Mama, LLC) to replicate Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s findings in a follow-up study on this concern, then go above and beyond by conducting a deep-dive into the issue with this comprehensive article on the subject.
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Many points in this article strongly oppose the stance Lead Safe Mama, LLC takes related to Lead contamination in cassava flour-based products — fundamentally, “no safe level of Lead exposure” means “no safe level of Lead exposure,” and rating products based on the comparative levels of Lead-content is a misguided approach, especially when using industry-influenced serving size-based metrics for those evaluations when it is a known fact most Americans will eat more than the recommended serving size of any given product in a sitting or day). We are also incredibly thankful that Consumer Reports took the time to conduct such a detailed investigation into the issue and confirm Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s findings.
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In spite of our disparate perspectives on the need to eliminate any known source of Lead exposure whenever possible, we believe this Consumer Reports article will precipitate a new level of awareness toward the concern for potential food-based Lead exposure, resulting in turn with more pediatricians evaluating the potential of this risk from gluten-free diets, especially in cases of “mysterious” Lead exposure in children. This is a significant potential outcome that cannot be underestimated in terms of the societal value of today’s Consumer Reports article.
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I also want to take a moment to profoundly thank everyone in the Lead Safe Mama online community (the more than 2.3 million of you who read our articles and participated in this work throughout the past year alone, helping complete this laboratory testing and raising funds for Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s reporting costs). Thank you.
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This outcome is a team effort with the Lead Safe Mama online community. National coverage from Consumer Reports Magazine (Consumer Reports Advocacy) would not have come to pass without YOUR participation in this movement. So, thank you. Thank you so much from ALL OF US here at Lead Safe Mama, LLC. Thank you for being part of the international conversation on childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety. This impact and outcome would not have been possible without all of you.
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Tamara Rubin
Owner — Lead Safe Mama, LLC
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P.S. Thank you also to our friends at MyTapScore dot com/ GoSimpleLab dot com for helping us with our initial rounds of testing on the cassava flour products last year (helping us confirm what we knew would be the case based on decades of past scientific research into the issue and helping us identify specific products of concern by brand, ingredient profile, and product name). Here’s a link to the SimpleLab consumer level test kits available on Amazon (aflink) — although we did not use these for most of our testing (since the low threshold of detection we require for our testing is lower than typically noted in this test), the kits are a great option for most consumers: https://amzn.to/4kcrIpY
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Consumer Reports article: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/cassava-flour-chips-bread-more-contain-high-levels-of-lead-a7817220954/
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Here’s our landing page with links to the lab reports for all the products we’ve tested to date:
https://tamararubin.com/2024/05/food-articles/
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Here’s a link to our current list of all the safer product choices we found as a result of this community-collaborative, independent, third-party laboratory testing initiative: https://tamararubin.com/2025/04/73/
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Here’s the link to our documentary film about this concern:
https://youtu.be/lMbhbwMhs1U?si=Iw1ZnR7O7o4WM_VB

For those new to the Lead Safe Mama 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 four sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005).

• Tamara owns and runs Lead Safe Mama, LLC — a unique community collaborative woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety.
• Since July 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for six product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
• All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
• Please check out our press page to see some of the news coverage of our work here.