September 16, 2025 Newsletter with Random Bits & Thoughts: Davids Toothpaste & Updates on our Lead Safe Mama App

September 16, 2025

Hi all!

There are a few things I wanted to share with you, including some topics I have shared on social media (things you may not have seen yet, as “the algorithm” really restricts our engagement there unless we pay to promote posts).

#1). Davids Toothpaste (No apostrophe? Not sure why that is!)

The owner of Davids Toothpaste wrote me a rather ridiculous email, which I responded to in a very reasonable and measured way. The email and my response can be found at this link (I will also post it on the website soon, for those who are not on Instagram). Please make sure to scroll through all 17 images and read the full response. Please also feel free to post your thoughts in the comments. Your comments keep us going when we receive responses like this.

Ironically — or maybe not so ironic (?) — even before we received an email from Eric (the owner of Davids), I had decided to send another sample of Davids to the lab for testing (we should have those results back in the next day or two).

The reason for this retest was that, “technically,” the initial lab report showed “non-detect” for Mercury and Cadmium but that is only because the limits of the lab report were too high (one of the reasons we switched labs several months ago — you can see that lab report here).

Now that we have a more reliable lab (that consistently tests down to lower thresholds of detection), I wanted this retest conducted to help determine if, in fact, Davids “EWG VERIFIED” (!!!) products actually do test positive for Mercury and Cadmium (or not). I am excited to see those results and share them with you as soon as we receive them from the lab.

Reporting and retesting on this product was not community-funded, as we did not launch a campaign to cover the costs, but we truly could use your contributions right now. While we have gotten quite caught up on our shortfall from the summer months, we are currently $3,780 short in covering payments to our team this month, so if you would like to make a contribution in support of this Davids toothpaste retesting (and all of the other, not-yet-funded testing we have recently published) you can do that here on our General GoFundMe Campaign.

Simply bumping up your Patreon membership to the next tier would make a big difference, too! We are currently at a combined monthly total for Patreon contributions of $1,030 a month, contributed by 391 individuals, for an average monthly gift of $2.63 from each paid Patreon member. Our EOY Goal for 2025 is $3,000 a month. Here’s the link to support us in that way if you are so inclined: http://www.patreon.com/LeadSafeMama

Lead Safe Mama, LLC is not a nonprofit, so contributions are not tax-deductible — just deeply appreciated.

#2). Avi Update

My son Avi is still in search of an apartment near his college.

Avi is the main reason I do what I do. He has a diagnosed permanent brain injury from being acutely Lead-poisoned at 7-months-old. He struggles with issues related to his brain injury every day, and he needs my support for a lot of the basics (which is why I am helping him out again this year for a month or two, as long as he needs me, with his transition to college).

That said, as those of you who have seen our documentary film may already know, Avi is brilliant. He has a 130 IQ (a point shy of Mensa, technically, although he is officially a member of Mensa now) even though he was diagnosed with a visual memory in the 4th percentile. With appropriate disability accommodations (text-to-speech and speech-to-text technology, and additional time for exams and projects, plus a lot of love, patience, and understanding from his professors!) Avi simply thrives.

He is currently on the Dean’s List here at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and has been for the last two semesters, with a 4.0 GPA (straight A’s!). He is working toward a degree in Astrophysics. If you have not yet seen the film and would like to better understand Avi, his journey, and why I do what I do, here’s the link to watch it (interruption-free) on Vimeo. And here’s a link to watch it on YouTube.

The housing crisis here in Honolulu is ridiculous (it’s two months in, and we’re still trying to find him a somewhat affordable apartment for the year that works well for him given his disabilities), but at least most of the people we have met along this journey have been absolutely lovely. Avi and I posted this silly little update video yesterday, if you would like to follow along with the journey.

#3). Naturepedic

Just a reminder that Naturepedic is helping sponsor this work, bridging the financial gap for many of our not-yet-funded testing campaigns from the summer. We are still working on the accounting for all of that (which we will publish as soon as we have updates). In thanks for their sponsorship, we have posted a banner with a link to the Naturepedic website at the top of every page of our website. Please do check out their site and offerings.

We will let you know when Naturepedic has any big sales, too (and will swap out their banner for the duration of those sales). Their new (not-during-a-sale) banner is posted at the top, here on this update, as we wanted you to see what it looks like so you can keep an eye out for it. When you click on their banner (or other links to their site from our site), it is a nice way of showing your appreciation for their support of our work. If they get enough “link love” (clicks from all of you!) over the coming months, Naturepedic may even renew this support for next year, which would be absolutely FABULOUS!

I am not a fan of conspicuous consumption — please don’t buy a new mattress or sheets if you don’t need them, but if you do need them, thank you for considering Naturepedic (for all the reasons I’ve shared here, at this link)! I personally am mostly excited about their new organic stuffed animals, which Naturepedic is releasing in limited batches of special characters. My new baby nephew is turning a year old next month and I intend to shower him with organic Naturepedic stuffies!

#4). The Lead Safe Mama App!

We got our first bid back from app developers and are now looking for a partner to help fund the Lead Safe Mama app, which will house and share (while continuing to crowd-fund) all of our community-nominated, third-party, laboratory test results for products.

While we have a couple of candidates in mind for partnering with us on this project, if you know of anyone who might be interested in helping develop this app (either with a short-term loan to the business, or an investment/ partnership relationship of sorts, see below), please do let us know. Email me personally at TamaraRubin@mac.com.

One idea the Lead Safe Mama team is discussing is a $200,000 sponsorship, which would cover most of our development and prototyping costs for the app, given the current bid and our team’s time spent developing. We are also considering offering the sponsoring company a header banner at the top of every page of the app (similar to Naturepedic’s banner at the top of the website this Fall/ Winter) for two years (including the first year through the development phase, and the full second year, which we expect will be the first fully operational year).

The app will otherwise be ad-free, so this could be a great visibility and exposure opportunity for a company that might like to reach a very targeted audience of parents — mostly mothers, and some grandparents, too — looking to make safer choices for their families!

Of course, we would carefully and thoroughly vet any prospective partners and would not consider any companies that make Lead-contaminated products for this opportunity.

#5). Amazon Affiliate Earnings

We are falling behind on our Amazon affiliate earnings this month and could use your help.

Our Amazon partnership, unfortunately (#becauseAmazon), provides a critical base of funding to cover the basic operating costs of Lead Safe Mama, LLC. This is a simple reminder that if you are doing ANY Amazon shopping this fall or in the coming holiday season, please start your shopping by first clicking on a Lead Safe Mama, LLC affiliate link. You don’t need to purchase what we link to for us to possibly receive a percentage of what you spend (at no extra cost to you); you simply need to click one of our links at the beginning of your shopping session and then go about your shopping as you normally would. Thank you for supporting our work. Here’s an af-link to a Lead-free item I use in my home to get you started: https://amzn.to/3Vl5Jmc

To support you in supporting our work in this way, we are spending some time updating our “Lead-Free and On-Sale” page of the website (check in there now if you are curious, and then maybe check back again in a few hours — we should have all of the links in each category updated by tomorrow). Here’s that link. We update this page as often as we can in between publishing lab reports! It’s a good page to bookmark, but there are also Amazon affiliate links on every single page of the website (for you to click on before beginning your shopping), or you could use the links published on our current lab-tested safer choices list — check them out here.

The End

Those are all of the bits and pieces I wanted to share right now (before it gets too late)! The problem is the time difference! It’s only just after 6 p.m. here, but that means it’s already after midnight in New York — so some of you may see this in the morning.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for being part of the international conversation on childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety.

Pending lab reports are in the graphic below (shared last night on social media), in case you are curious about what’s in the queue! We expect to be publishing at least four more of these before the end of the day today, Hawaii time.

Aloha!

Tamara Rubin
& The Lead Safe Mama Team