About

Updated April 26, 2025

About Tamara

Tamara Rubin is an internationally recognized, multiple federal award-winning Lead-poisoning prevention advocate, documentary ﬁlmmaker, and mother of four sons (ages 28, 22, 20, and 16). She took on the cause of childhood Lead poisoning and consumer goods safety advocacy after her sons were acutely Lead poisoned by the work of a painting contractor in 2005. Tamara lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and youngest sons (who each have permanent disabilities and other health challenges directly attributable to their Lead exposure as infants). Tamara founded Lead Safe Mama, LLC on January 5, 2018.

The Goal of Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s Work

Childhood Lead poisoning is the single most costly and preventable environmental illness in the world today. Through the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC, we are committed to educating every parent about this wholly preventable environmental illness that causes permanent brain damage in young children and yet — still — conservatively costs the United States alone more than $50.9 billion annually! Through her public advocacy work and private consulting, Tamara has helped millions create safer homes and environments for their children. She continues helping families every day personally.

Website & Social Media: LeadSafeMama.com/TamaraRubin.com

To reach parents where they “live” and spend their time (on social media), Lead Safe Mama, LLC has created a strong web and social media presence for the cause of childhood Lead poisoning prevention. In the 2024 calendar year alone, this website saw nearly 2,300,000 unique visitors from around the world (with over 7,000,000 unique page views)! Every new visitor to our website helps share this message with the world:

Lead poisoning was not “solved” with the 1978 “ban” on Lead in residential paint; more than one in three children worldwide today has had an unsafe level of Lead in their blood in their lifetime.

Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s April 2025 Outreach Numbers

Supporting Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s efforts to reach as many parents as possible with information to protect their children from Lead exposure, it is a goal and express intention of this work that the information we provide on this website continue to be freely available (never behind a paywall). To this end, there are currently more than 4,500 freely available articles and pages with information about childhood Lead poisoning and consumer goods toxicant test results on the Lead Safe Mama website as well as a free preview link to our full documentary feature film on the subject. Starting in 2024, we began publishing nearly all of our articles without advertisements to help ensure the content is easier to read and make the science-based information we provide easier to understand.

In addition to this website, you can follow and engage with Lead Safe Mama’s work on all various social media channels @LeadSafeMama. Our social media presence tends to be a bit more informal (compared to what we share on this website) and the Lead Safe Mama Team (Carissa, Serina, Dean, Sarah, Len, AJ, and others!) does their best to answer as many questions posed on social media as they can!

Instagram
Facebook page
Facebook group (free to join and participate)
Patreon (with free or paid options, but same benefits for all)
YouTube

The Business — Lead Safe Mama, LLC

Lead Safe Mama, LLC is a woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety based in Portland, Oregon. While Tamara Rubin has been coordinating public outreach work since 2007, the LLC was officially formed in 2018.

Lead Safe Mama, LLC has a unique community collaborative business model in which the work we do (including the subjects we write about and the independent consumer goods testing we perform with XRF technology and third-party, laboratory testing) is 100% directed and funded by the Lead Safe Mama parent advocacy community. Readers and followers of our website and social media channels let us know what they would like tested. They also often send in products for testing. These same readers help fund this work either directly through making financial contributions in support, or indirectly through sharing our work with their communities. The Lead Safe Mama community also plays a key role in helping us hold manufacturers accountable for producing toxic products by amplifying the impact of this work through grassroots and word-of-mouth efforts.

In addition to the independent consumer goods testing we conduct, volunteers in the international Lead Safe Mama community also work with us to coordinate collaborative outreach events for Lead poisoning prevention around the world. These events are normally free and open to the public, as well as sponsored, hosted, and paid for by community-based partners ranging from schools/ universities and hospitals/ clinics to local or state health departments. Tamara travels the United States (and the world) for these outreach events during January, April, and October of each year (most years) while also working directly with families and businesses that hire her in a consulting capacity along the way. In 2022 Tamara began expanding her in-person advocacy work to include locations outside of the United States, traveling to Europe each year for several months of volunteer advocacy work during the winter months. You can read more about the Lead Safe Mama, LLC business model here.

A primary focus of our work is to increase the visibility of childhood Lead poisoning. It is imperative we help normalize the concept that all children are at risk for Lead exposure and (at any age!) can be impacted — not just certain segments of the population deemed at risk based on outdated demographics. To this end, we often work with members of the press to support any stories they may be writing about childhood Lead poisoning (in most cases, our role is largely behind the scenes in connecting reporters with the families of Lead-poisoned children as they fit a story’s focus). For recent mentions of our work in the press, check out this link.

You can read about our unique community-collaborative business model here, with more details at this link.

Awards

Tamara Rubin has won several awards for her advocacy work, including two from the U.S. federal government when her work was honored by a consortium of federal agencies (the EPA, CDC, USDA, HUD, and USDoE) at the National Healthy Homes Conferences in 2011 and 2014.

Notable Media Coverage

Starting with a USA Today profile article in 2007 and a Today Show interview in 2008, Tamara’s work has since been covered by countless news sources — including CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, and ABC — for international, national, and local stories. Since her first public speaking engagement in 2007, Tamara has been interviewed and quoted in articles as well as video segments for a myriad of major outlets: The Guardian, Consumer Reports Magazine, Fortune, The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Voice of Russia, The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, Truthout, The New York Post, USA Today, Vice, Al Jazeera English, Better Homes and Gardens Australia, Cracked, Parents Magazine, NPR, and many others. For all Lead Safe Mama media coverage (with specific links), please see our In the News page here.

Recent Highlights:

April 2025: Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s findings of pervasive toxicant contamination in popular toothpaste and toothpowder products caught the attention of countless news outlets, starting with a piece published in The Guardian (see the press coverage here).
September 2024: PRODUCT RECALL (6) — Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s work was responsible for the Lead-painted Stanley Jr. Garden Set recall.
Summer 2024: Consumer Reports Magazine covered Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s findings of significant toxicant contamination in cassava-based children’s snack products, leading countless other outlets to break the news.
Spring 2024: Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s 2023 findings of Lead in Stanley Tumbler products went viral (see the press coverage here).
March 2023: PRODUCT RECALL (5) — Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s work was responsible for the Lead-contaminated Cupkin children’s cups recall.
February 2023: PRODUCT RECALL (4) — Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s work was responsible for the Lead-contaminated Bindle Bottle recall.
February 2023: Consumer Reports Magazine published a profile piece on Tamara’s work.
November 2022: PRODUCT RECALL (3) — Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s work initiated the Lead-contaminated Green Sprouts baby bottle recall.
August 2022: An NPR news piece about Lead exposure caused by consumer goods featured Tamara’s work with Lead Safe Mama.
July 2022: PRODUCT RECALL (2) — Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s work pushed the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to recall the Lead-painted NUK brand glass baby bottle.
June 2022: PRODUCT RECALL (1) — Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s work is behind the CPSC recall of a Lead-painted toy manufactured by Jumping Jumperoo.
April 2022: Upon invitation, Tamara was a guest speaker at Stanford University.
April 2022: Cracked Magazine featured the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC (in response to a viral video on TikTok)!