For Reddit: Who the heck is Tamara Rubin? She’s not a celebrity!? Why is she involved in this TAG PR thing?

This is what I posted on Reddit Tonight:
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Header: Who the heck is Tamara Rubin? She’s not a celebrity!? Why is she involved in this TAG PR thing? Hi – I thought if I created a post we could keep questions and conversations about my situation to one post (so we don’t have to share things in multiple places!) TIA
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Post Caption:
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Hi. My name is Tamara Rubin. I own Lead Safe Mama, LLC. I am happy to answer questions below.
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Please note I am a bit of an old lady as far as some internet stuff goes. I am 56 years old, born in 1969 – and have lived a couple of lifetimes (as far as careers and life experiences go). I started designing websites c. 1996 (and was programming computers for fun when I was a kid, c. 1981/1982/1983). I was teaching Dartmouth Graduate Wall Street Executives how to use these new fangled Apple computers in 1986/1987 – when I was 17! There’s so much new stuff every day (Blue Sky, Reddit, Patreon, Instagram, Substack) there’s just too much for me to learn and keep track of online. I just cannot do it all (I’m old fashioned and rusty on keeping up with all the new computer stuff after being database designer and a computer consultant with Apple – as an independent contractor – for decades from 1987 through c.2011 – back in the “old days” – working with clients like Kaiser Permanente and Drive Savers Data Recovery and on projects for companies including Nike and Starbucks). One of my fun stories from back in the day: Kaiser hired me to work on and update their Y2K Medical Equipment Compatibility Alert System (to let them know which equipment might stop working with the Y2K bug). The deadline to complete this project was February 2000! 🙂 lol!
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I share the above as an excuse for (and to apologize in advance for) having TWO Reddit profiles.
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I created one on my laptop (this one), and couldn’t remember the login when I was logging into my phone – and so created another one so I could log in on my phone without a hassle. My other one is “Mom-Here” and that is also actually me (because of the above noted reason, and not because of some sort of intended subterfuge (which the peanut gallery has accused me of – in response to all this TAG PR nonsense).

The photo with this post is me with my kids in December of 2025. I don’t like this photo of me, but it is a great pic of our whole family. My husband and my four sons. Left to right: Colescott Rubin (29 in this photo), Avi Rubin (20 in this photo), Tamara Rubin (56), Leonard Rubin (67 in this photo), AJ Rubin (23 in this photo), Charlie Rubin (the baby, 17 in this photo). This photo was the best I could find at the moment to include in this post (it’s after midnight here and I am trying to get this posted before I go to sleep!)- sorry about the funny arrows – I must have used it for some other post!
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Related to this whole TAG PR mess, I think it is very important to highlight the fact that – not only has my business and my life been entirely disrupted and significantly damaged – my children have also been traumatized by this whole situation over the past couple of years.
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My younger children have disabilities from being acutely lead poisoned as infants and the trauma of this whole experience (related to Melissa Nathan / Jed Wallace / Justin Baldoni, etc.) has created a new layer of issues for them (in terms of anxiety due to related food scarcity, poverty, and most important: significant, visceral, personal distress over the lack of truth and justice in the world – and a related high level of despair, I cannot begin to tell you).
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Someone even decided to take this a little further (apparently in a bid to see how much harm they could cause) and – last August, 2025 – called CPS (Child Protective Services) on our family in the middle of this, and I am fairly certain it was someone reacting to some part of this smear campaign. Ironically they made the complaint in Portland, Oregon when I was in Hawaii for an entire month with my 17 year old getting my adult son (20 at the time) set up at university (so anything they – whoever made the complaint – were submitting a complaint was entirely fabricated as we were not even in the State at the time! and my friends said “FFS, your kids are adults!”)
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I’m personally barely holding it together at the moment (drowning in legal debt from all of this – and behind in nearly all of our bills – while also incredibly thankful for the generosity of strangers!) I give updates on the status of this in most of my related articles and videos (in case you are curious where things stand now). I am going to try to post an update video tomorrow.
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I am not going to let this whole TAG PR / Hiya / Smear Campaign break me.
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I am not going to give up everything I have worked so hard for since my children were poisoned in 2005.
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The focus of my business, Lead Safe Mama, LLC is childhood Lead-poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety. In recent years I I have partnered with Consumer Reports on investigative projects (stories based on my work and investigations, stories I brought to them) and Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s work has also been featured in The Guardian and countless other news outlets over the past 19 years since I started being a vocal advocate trying to protect children everywhere from unnecessary exposure to toxic heavy metals in their homes, schools and community.
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Here’s last year’s big coverage in the Guardian (about Toothpaste): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/17/toothpaste-lead-heavy-metals
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Another one in The Guardian in which our work is heavily cited:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/09/ceramic-nontoxic-cookware
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A recent Consumer Reports collaboration:
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/cassava-flour-chips-bread-more-contain-high-levels-of-lead-a7817220954/
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And some of you may know our work from when we got fidget spinners at Target recalled (2017):
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fidget-spinners-high-levels-of-lead-consumer-advocacy-organization-report/
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Or when we got these glass Lead-painted baby bottles recalled (2018):
https://www.recall.nuk-usa.com
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Or when we got the Bindle Bottle recalled (2023):
https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/bindle-bottle-issues-voluntary-recall-32-oz-24-oz-20-oz-and-13-oz-insulated-food-and-drink-bottles
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I used to have a nonprofit that I founded, but that was destroyed based on false accusations made by a fraudulent anonymous complaint to the Oregon Department of Justice – shortly after I had just presented with Bernie Sanders in Flint and opened for Erin Brockovich in Portland (in 2016). Totally sus timing! I had Bernie by my side when I said – with a bank of international cameras in the room with us, in a room with 500+ audience members during a snowstorm in Flint – that we needed to hold the Lead industry accountable for what had happened in Flint. No one had ever said that on camera before. No one said it since. The “investigation” against me appears to have started within days of me making that statement.
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I was illegally arrested for crimes I did not commit in November of 2017.
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All of the (false) charges against me were dropped in full in May of 2018.
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In his November 2017 testimony to the Grand Jury (testimony he made in order to have me arrested, illegally – for crimes I did not commit), the DOJ “investigator” behind this situation conveniently “forgot” to include the exculpatory evidence (evidence which he had in his possession at the time, and which – months later, in February of 2018 – he confirmed during a conversation in a room with the DA and my attorneys that he knew he had in his possession at the time of his testimony).
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What was this exculpatory evidence you ask? It was a multi-year investigative audit done by the IRS (in response to the initial fraudulent complaint), an audit that determined there was no financial fraud and that the charity that I ran actually still owed me $30,000 in funds I had loaned to the organization to keep it going while we worked on finishing the film.
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Because of this situation ten years ago (2016-2018) – I have been through this kind of pain before and I know I will survive. I have been through it, but it took me 8 years to begin to recover and then all of this TAG PR bullshit happened to tear things apart again.
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As a result of the fraudulent DOJ investigation based on a fraudulent anonymous complaint – I decided that nonprofits are too vulnerable in this day and age and that (given the potential for false attacks on our credibility due to the controversial nature of the work we do… who knew protecting children from lead exposure would be so controversial?!) a better structure for the work we do is an LLC. So in late 2017 we started using “Lead Safe Mama” on social media and in January of 2018 we created Lead Safe Mama, LLC.
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Lead Safe Mama is not a person, it is a movement. We use science to educate parents to help them learn how to make safer choices for their families (safer choices for homes to live in, for schools to attend, for products to buy, for foods to eat).
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As an organization, we are still fully community driven like when we were a nonprofit. We also still help families for free every day (families with questions because their children have just been Lead poisoned and they cannot find any resources, families looking to prevent future lead exposure in their children, people looking to identify hidden sources of toxicant exposure in their homes). We also do some consulting with manufacturers to help them make better products.
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In 2024, before our income basically dried up because of all of this, we had an active team of 7 part-time helpers and (about) 8 members of our legal team. We are currently up to about 13 members of our legal team (I have lost track, we have four new people in the past week!) and two part-time helpers.
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The lab testing we do is primarily funded by members of our community. Our community nominates products for testing and our community helps cover the cost of the testing and reporting we do. We test both durable consumer goods (furniture, dishes, toys, etc.) and consumables (foods, supplements, personal care products, etc.) We use appropriate, replicable scientific testing for everything we do (XRF testing for consumer goods, and independent third-party lab testing for consumables). If you want to be more engaged in that part of what we do – I would like to encourage you to follow us on Patreon (you can join us there for free, or with a small monthly contribution in support of the work if you like): https://www.patreon.com/leadsafemama/membership
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We published the lab report for Hiya children’s vitamins as part of our lab testing initiative in September 2024.
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Before the impacts of this smear campaign had started to hit us really hard, we were testing and reporting on as much as – and sometimes more than – 30 (community nominated, community funded) products a month, we are currently down to testing and reporting on only 6 to 10 products a month.
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Important to note: I’m not MAHA. I am a science educator, working to help people understand science that may help them live longer, healthier, better lives. A lot of our readership is MAHA though (so it’s a fine line!).
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Prior to all this nonsense starting I did quite a lot of public speaking gigs as part of my work. In spite of the nonsense shared throughout the smear campaign – funds generated to help with our testing and reporting initiative (The Lead Safe Mama, LLC Community Collaborative Laboratory Testing Initiative) do not fully cover the costs, yet our work (and specifically our reporting) is never influenced by manufacturers.
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I often personally end up subsidizing the costs of that work out of my primary income – which historically has included consulting with families and businesses (including sometimes consulting with law firms working on cases, or consulting with medical providers unable to find a source of a child’s poisoning), and coordinating public outreach events (free to the public, offering free resources like blood testing and consumer goods testing and education) and doing speaking engagements.
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Since all of this started just over two years ago I have had no (ZERO!) paid speaking engagements. My personal income has dropped precipitously. My business’s income has also dropped precipitously. This is also following a time where we had been seeing significant year-over-year growth (both in terms of the reach and impact of our work and the income we were earning related to that – income which was nearly all put back into the business to keep our work – and impact – growing).
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Prior to this time (this new “post TAG PR” phase of my life), I was an invited guest teacher or a keynote speaker at events on a regular basis. I have spoken at or taught classes at Dartmouth Hospital, MIT, Stanford University, Oregon Health and Sciences University, Portland State University, Berklee College of Music, and New York University. I am often a guest speaker at health departments and hospitals across the United States – presentations through which doctors, nurses, and educators get continuing education credits to attend.
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In the past four years I have also done quite a few outreach events outside of the United States, which I love – because there is NEVER any pushback about the science when I present in other countries… they BELIEVE in science in those countries and it so very refreshing!
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If you want information about my story before all of this – please watch my documentary film on childhood Lead poisoning. It is 92 minutes long and has music donated by the band The Who and by Tom Waits. Jon Fishman (Drummer of the band Phish) is an executive director of the project. I helped him when his child was poisoned and he wanted to return the favor to help the movement.
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The film is available on vimeo – link below – for free (it is 92 minutes long). It is also on YouTube but don’t watch it there because YouTube throws ads in it (and those ads are not monetized by us and don’t benefit the movement in any way). The film was never fully finished because of the financial impacts from attacks on my advocacy work in 2016 and 2017 (for which we ended up suing the Oregon Department of Justice in federal court), but it is a very fine cut version and looks finished to most people (we were ready to take the next steps to get it to theaters but all of my money was diverted to lawyers at the time – related to the situation above). The film also has footage of my 2016 presentation in Flint with Bernie Sanders and (done long before the current Epstein Scandals), my 2012 interview with Noam Chomsky (we can talk about THAT in another thread!) https://vimeo.com/156169133
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I would like to make a second film about everything that has happened since 2016 (starting perhaps in November of 2017 with me being handcuffed in my kitchen where I had been sitting home-schooling my 8 year old disabled son, and then thrown into the back of a black unmarked SUV – with the arresting officers expressly telling me that they did not know what I was being arrested for (they did not know what crime I had allegedly committed). It’s been a wild ride for sure, with lots of fun celebrity guests and cameos along the way too (to keep things interesting!) – but that’s another story. I’ve always pictured this phase of my life as a Coen Brothers/ David Lynch film – because of the absurdity of it all (even through today – and ESPECIALLY with the latest chapter of the past 2+ years, who ever could have predicted that I would be linked to something with this level of celebrity involvement and intrigue?! It’s been an out of this world experience on so many levels!) If anyone knows anyone who wants to help me with the script on this, please let me know.
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Back to the kids: If you want to do something that would be so lovely and supportive for my kids (to help out our family), you could follow them on Instagram. They are performing artists (clowns / musicians), and my two eldest have been touring with (opening for) Haute and Freddy this Summer and Fall. (Haute and Freddy is featured in the new Carrie Series!)
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My younger two are a photographer and a visual artist (among other things, but that’s what they are sharing on their Instagram accounts). Avi is now studying astrophysics with the University of Edinburgh – in spite of his brain injury due to Lead poisoning. Charlie is with me pretty much 24/7 (including right now, it’s almost 1:00 a.m. and he is at the table sitting next to me creating art!) and we are working on social skills. We try to do something educational every day together (like go to a museum, or learn about history, or watch an important film, or read an important book, or explore nature – either before or after I work). Today’s activity was a kayak trip on Loch Ness (we’re staying in bunks at a youth hostel here), tomorrow we will be going for a hike in the highlands and spending most of the day inside at the Youth Hostel, drawing, reading, playing games and practicing talking to new people (it’s supposed to rain).
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All of this means I don’t sleep much, especially if I have to both work AND deal with lawyers (and fundraising to help pay lawyers!). Charlie is one of those kiddos who may not ever leave home because of his disabilities. He has been especially traumatized by this whole situation, since he is always with me (and knows about more of it as it has been unfolding).
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Rubin Brothers: https://www.instagram.com/rubinbrothers/
AJ Rubin (24): https://www.instagram.com/ajrubinart/
Colescott Rubin (30): https://www.instagram.com/colescottrubin/
Avi Rubin: Astrophotographer and Nature Photographer (21): https://www.instagram.com/aviontheartisticspectrum/
Charlie Rubin (18): Visual Artist – https://www.instagram.com/charlieparkerrubin/
(& Here’s Haute & Freddy just in case you do not know who they are – they are super fun and have a 1980s / Cindy Lauper + David Bowie vibe! – https://www.instagram.com/hauteandfreddy/ )
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& Here’s my Instagram (below) if you want to stay on top of the latest related to this whole HIYA/ TAG PR nonsense. I post updates on this whole situation as things unfold – my lawyer understands that I need to communicate with our readership along the way and she’s fine with that.
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Lead Safe Mama, LLC historically has had about 2.3 million readers around the world each year for the past two years. I will put our readership charts in the comments. We measure the success of the reach and impact of the work we do through our readership numbers on the website each year (how many unique individual readers and how many unique page views). This whole thing caused by Hiya and Tag PR will likely cut that in half this year (and for years into the future until we can get this back link stuff all disappeared!) This is after we had previously been having consistent-year-over-year growth in terms of our reach and impact across all previous years (except the first year of the pandemic) – again I will post the graph in the comments. Here’s our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadsafemama/
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I wll get into all the details about Hiya in the comments below (and will answer questions as they come up), but I wanted to make sure y’all know who I am a bit.
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FAQ: YES I am working on a couple of books (time permitting) and YES our app (which will include all of our published lab reports – which is now at about 700) will be finished soon. If you would like to be kept up to date on our app follow us on Patreon too – the link above – (and this Instagram channel: https://www.instagram.com/leadsafellama/ )
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While I will post about each of these below, here’s the link with all of the Hiya related articles on our website: https://tamararubin.com/category/hiya/
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It’s after 1:30 in the morning now – I cannot proof read this now my eyes are blurry (sorry it is so long, but there was a lot to say – both to dispel a lot of the points brought up in the smear campaign and by way of introduction, anticipating what questions you might have). I may come back and edit this in the morning (if Reddit lets me do that). I will also answer your questions when I wake up. Thanks for reading.
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Tamara Elise Rubin
Owner – Lead Safe Mama, LLC
A UniqueCommunity Collaborative Woman-Owned Small Business with a focus on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention and Consumer Goods Safety.
www.LeadSafeMama.com / www.TamaraRubin.com