Today’s Story in The Hollywood Reporter

ByTamara Posted: Updated:
3 Comments
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September 25, 2026
Friday

Hi all!

I am going to start this update with a bit of context and background for folks in our community to read before they read the Hollywood Reporter Article.

  • The link to today’s news article mentioning Lead Safe Mama, LLC & Tamara Rubin – published in The Hollywood Reporter – is below.
  • This Hollywood Reporter article discusses and mentions specific newly-uncovered additional information (made public this past week) related to the digital / back-linked smear campaign launched in an effort to destroy the professional and public reputation of Lead Safe Mama, LLC and of me (Tamara Rubin) personally.
  • If you are new to learning about this, you can read more about this situation via previously published articles on the following links: 
  • This past week we learned that this new information relevant to our smear campaign case was discovered thanks to the work of the investigative teams working in support of similar lawsuits for several other parties.
  • At face value, these similar lawsuits seemingly have nothing to do with Lead Safe Mama, LLC and are being undertaken by parties on both sides with whom we have no relationship.
  • Examples of these seemingly-unrelated lawsuits include the Blake Lively / Justin Baldoni lawsuits and the Rebel Wilson / Amanda Ghost lawsuits.
  • It has been determined (by forensic digital investigations) that in each case all of these lawsuits are linked.
    • They are linked by the fact that the same “Fixer PR Firm” was hired to defame / destroy / discredit the subject of the related smear campaign (apparently – again, in each case – in order to either further the financial goals or improve the potential for positive legal outcomes for the people who hired this PR firm).
  • The image below is a text exchange from people involved with the PR Firm in question (published as evidence in one of the related lawsuits) — in which Melissa Nathan (with TAG PR) states “you know we can bury anyone”: 

[This piece has been edited for clarity – it was originally written with kiddos underfoot! – please let me know if that does not make sense or if it is confusing at all!]

Section #1)
What We Knew & What We Didn’t Know

We knew there was a smear campaign against us (in October of 2024, with the launch of two websites that were hit pieces targeting our work), but we did not know – definitively – who was behind any of it.

There were a handful of possible candidates, given the lab testing and reporting we had done in the months immediately prior to the smear websites being launched – but we (everyone on Lead Safe Mama Team) simply couldn’t figure out which company was behind it. Here are some of the ideas we were tossing around (while we searched for clues that might confirm one of these possibilities):

  1. We thought it might be Serenity Kids as they were (apparently) in the process of securing a $52,000,000 investment round when we published that their baby snack puffs tested positive for Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, and Arsenic  – March 22, 2024 – article link here.
  2. We thought it could possibly be Siete (although that seemed unlikely, given they essentially ignored our lab test results for their products when we published them) as they were in the middle of a $1.2 BILLION DOLLAR buyout by Pepsi around the time we published the lab reports of several of their products (March 2024 to September 2024 – link here).
  3. We also (more recently) considered it could have even been Redmond Life, as – for years – we have been trying to get Redmond’s heavily-Lead-contaminated, marketed-to-children lemon flavored Earth Paste toothpaste off the market (so they really don’t like us!), and we had also published the lab report for their “Real Salt” product in July of 2024 – which showed concerning levels of Lead (Real Salt article link here, Earth Paste article link here).
  4. Finally we considered it might be Hiya Health. Hiya’s aggressive public response to our reporting the lab test results for their children’s vitamin products in September of 2024 put them at the top of our list when the two smear websites and integrated YouTube video were published in October — but as the impact of the smear campaign seemed to keep snowballing long after October 2024, we really were not 100% sure and could not find any evidence to support that assumption – or any of the other options above (not until now, September 2026!)
Here’s the timeline (and links) for the articles we published related to Hiya (including lab test results of Hiya products):
Apparently the ambiguity of the source of the smear campaign (ours and others) was by design.

We now know (based on evidence presented in some of the other related legal cases, as noted in the December 2024 New York Times article above) that Melissa Nathan and Jed Wallace / TAG PR “sell” their smear campaigns to clients with the promise that they are “untraceable”. [Lesson learned I guess? Nothing is untraceable these days if enough people put their minds together and are given enough time and resources to follow the breadcrumbs!]

We also did not begin learn about the full scope of the smear campaign until over a year later – in December of 2025 (and the months following). We received confirmation at that time that there was much more to this orchestrated initiative to discredit us – more than the initial two websites and video. Those elements were the tip of the iceberg. Much of this defamation campaign was orchestrated on the “back end” (behind the scenes online) —  supported by something called “back links” created to drag down the online profile of our work, negatively impacting our social media presence and our website.

I think it is very important to note that the impacts of this smear campaign are ongoing – this is not a thing of the past. The digital backlinks to porn sites (more on that here) and the false news stories that were generated by the smear campaign are still live (not to mention countless related comments on Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit). The readership on our website is down considerably as well, in large part because the growth and expansion of the reach of our work on social media was basically frozen in time in response to techniques used in this smear campaign.

Section #2)
New Evidence:

Newly-public evidence indicates that Hiya Health was – in fact – the business that hired “Fixer PR Firm” TAG PR / Melissa Nathan / Jed Wallace to create this digital “untraceable” smear campaign against Lead Safe Mama, LLC (and against me personally) in an attempt to discredit our scientific findings and reporting of Lead, Cadmium, and Arsenic in Hiya’s children’s vitamins.

Why would Hiya do this?

Of course we can only guess at what the logic and motivation of the owners of Hiya may have been (the “why” behind all of this!) – but it does seem likely that Darren Litt and Adam Gillman (Hiya’s owners / founders) decided to try to destroy the credibility of a woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning and prevention and consumer goods safety for money. They likely did this to protect their bottom line (to help ensure their in-progress $205,000,000 partial buyout went through).

Apparently, destroying the credibility of a science-focused small business that published independent, third-part lab test results demonstrating that their children’s vitamins tested positive  for Lead, Cadmium, and Arsenic somehow seemed like a good idea to them (and somehow – inexplicably – seemed like a better path than fixing the problem that the Lead Safe Mama, LLC report exposed).

More on this below.

Section #3)
Things we learned along the way

Long after we published our first article with a lab report for a Hiya children’s vitamin product (link below) we learned that – at the time of our publishing that article – Hiya was in the middle of selling 78.8% of the interest in their business for $205,000,000 (two hundred and five million dollars) to USANA Health Sciences, a deal that closed in December of 2024.

More recently we learned that USANA is a larger supplement company with nearly $1 Billion in sales in 2025 and the same amount projected for 2026:

Again, it was not until December of 2025 that we began to learn the extent of this smear campaign and the scope of the impacts of the actions taken related to this. Luckily, one of the forensic investigators working on the Blake Lively case and related cases was aware of the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC long before this case came up. As soon as they were legally able to tell us what they had learned as part of the other tangential – but related – investigations into TAG PR, they contacted me (in December of 2025) and explained the new information to me in detail.

It was not until this week (September 2026) that we received documentation – in the form of an email to and referencing the people involved with TAG PR – indicating (and essentially confirming) that Hiya was likely the product manufacturer behind this smear campaign implemented by TAG PR. This email (sent to Melissa Nathan) is dated October 18, 2024 and indicates that Hiya hired Melissa Nathan and Jed Wallace for a “Crisis Scenario Plan” at that time.

What’s the main problem with all of this?

I am still shocked (and full of dismay and sadness for the children of the world) that a children’s vitamin company would put so much energy into trying to discredit science showing their products tested positive for Lead – when instead they could have put significantly less energy (and probably also significantly less money in the end) into cleaning-up their product to make it safer for children. It’s sad that this is the state of the world – and it’s also sad to have such clear evidence of what lengths people in the supplement industry will go to in an attempt to discredit replicable, third-party, independent science that contradicts their marketing spin and interferes with their profits.

Here’s the link to today’s article in The Hollywood Reporter:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/top-hollywood-publicist-alleged-celebrity-smear-sites-1236709454/

Section #4)
Lab Testing of Hiya Products

We have overseen / coordinated independent, third-party laboratory testing on two Hiya children’s supplement products.

Each Hiya product we had tested was confirmed – through independent, third-party, lab testing – to be contaminated with heavy metals. It is important to note that the levels of heavy metals identified in these products are entirely legal by all current regulatory standards. This is because there are currently no federal standards limiting levels of heavy metals-contamination in supplements to levels that are truly health-protective for children. Legality of the level of toxicants found in these products is irrelevant as the levels found are considered by experts in the scientific and medical communities to be unsafe – especially given these are products specifically marketed and sold for consumption by young children.

All relevant federal agencies have published statements in agreement with the consensus in the scientific and medical communities that there is no safe level of Lead exposure for human beings – and especially for young children.

Here’s the first report (September 2024):
https://tamararubin.com/2024/09/hiya-kids-daily-multivitamins-test-positive-for-lead-cadmium-arsenic-laboratory-report-here/

Here’s our second report (February 2026):
https://tamararubin.com/2026/02/hiya-greens/

Section #5)
How you can help us get to the other side of this smear campaign…
All the ways you can send funds in support of our the costs of our legal team:

Venmo: @LeadSafeMama
PayPal: Testing@LeadSafeMama.com
Zelle: Testing@LeadSafeMama.com
GoFundMe:
https://gofund.me/78be25e42
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/leadsafemama/membership

If you would like to make a payment directly to our lawyers using a credit card (and get miles or points for doing so!) please text me and I will get you the link: 415-609-3182

Thank you! 

Tamara Elise Rubin
Owner – Lead Safe Mama, LLC
& The Lead Safe Mama Team

As Lead Safe Mama, LLC is not a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, contributions in support of our work are not classified as tax-deductible gifts to charity, however they are critical in supporting our work and keeping us doing what we do. Thank you again.

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3 Comments

  1. Absolutely shocking behaviour. It always leads back to money as the motivation, doesn’t it?
    I’m so sorry that these malicious actions were taken against your work!

    Reply

  2. I’m so glad to finally get some of the answers to “Why is this happening?!?” as someone who watched things change on your platforms in real time. I’m certainly hopeful those responsible are held accountable!

    Reply

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