Lead Safe Mama


Budget for Laboratory Testing of Foods & Supplements being done by Lead Safe Mama, LLC

Updated: November 3, 2024

How to sponsor Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s testing of a food or supplement product

If you would like to sponsor having Lead Safe Mama, LLC test (and report on) a specific single food item (where Lead Safe Mama, LLC buys the item from the manufacturer or a local store, then tests the item and publishes the results so the testing is publicly available for all to see so you can share the results with the manufacturer via our website — Lead Safe Mama, LLC serves as an independent third-party source), you (on your own or with a group of friends) can make a $550 contribution to Lead Safe Mama, LLC.

We are also currently crowd-sourcing the funding for many products suggested by the community on GoFundMe and you can find all of our open GoFundMe campaigns linked here.

This money (crowd-funded, community group-funded, or contributed by a single individual) will cover the cost of purchasing the product, testing the product, and reporting/ publishing the test results. (Please note: Contributions are not tax-deductible as we are not a nonprofit.)

Cost Breakdown for Lead Safe Mama Sponsored Testing:

    • $239 to $444— Cost of test kit(s) from Simple Lab
      • $239 is the new (October 2024) cost for us to ensure “Ultra Low Level Testing” 
        • This is the cost of testing ONE item for Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, & Arsenic
      • A secondary cost to do an additional test for Antimony (at low levels) is $205 if we opt for that testing as well
    • $2 to $150 — Cost of product to be tested (food or supplement)
      • $50 is our approximate average cost, to date)
      • This covers our cost to purchase sufficient quantity of the product to be tested and to also keep some product “on file” (in storage), should product manufacturers challenge our findings (and should additional testing need to be done for any legal reasons).
      • Some products will cost more and some less to meet the required quantity of product for testing (about 50 grams of materials)
      • Our product cost range to date has been from about $2 on the low-end, for a can of specialty soda to about $150 on the high-end, for some vitamins/ supplements and some fancy specialty foods.
      • NOTE: We purchase items online whenever possible so that we have a digital record of the purchase for legal purposes. Many of the specialty foods and supplements are only sold with a subscription or by the case — so a minimum quantity of several units must be purchased (purchasing a single box or package online is not an option).
    • $35 to $50 — Fees (GoFundMe, PayPal, Venmo, etc)
      • GoFundMe has a minimum 45-cent processing fee (per each individual contribution). So, for example, if we received ninety nine $5 contributions via GoFundMe, the fee would be about $44.55.
      • PayPal and Venmo fees can be higher than GoFundMe (as a percentage of the contribution).
    • $170 to $215 — Additional Lead Safe Mama costs:
      • testing-related administrative assistance / project assistance
      • testing-related equipment and supplies (gloves, cleaning supplies, etc.)
      • social media support related to the food and supplement testing
      • article editing
      • product archiving (storage)
      • shipping and storage supplies
      • overhead costs related to this portion of our work
    • ________________________
    • $446 to $859 — Total Estimated Cost Range (Midpoint: $652.50) 
      • GoFundMe Goal Set at $550 per item ($750 including Antimony Testing)

Please note: This budget does not include any amount of funds for Tamara’s time for coordinating the testing and reporting (Tamara is volunteering her time to coordinate this food testing).

Please e-mail Testing@LeadSafeMama.com with “FOOD TESTING” in the subject line if you (alone or with a group of friends) are interested in sponsoring the testing of a particular food item in the above noted way (or if you would like to nominate a food item for a crowd-sourced funding campaign via GoFundMe, click here).

Q. “Why should we pay more to have this testing done by Lead Safe Mama, LLC instead of just doing it on our own?”

  1. Sponsoring Lead Safe Mama, LLC to complete the testing (and publish the results on our website and social media channels) carries more weight (in terms of demanding transparency and better standards from the companies whose products we are testing) than testing on your own for your personal use.
  2. Having Lead Safe Mama, LLC coordinate the testing also means the test results will reach a wider audience/ will have a greater public benefit (especially long-term, as all of the results for products we test are published on this website).
  3. When Lead Safe Mama, LLC coordinates the testing of a product, we (as a business) also assume the risk/ liability in the event any of the companies attempt to challenge any test results we publish.
  4. Unfortunately, if you test a product on your own, we cannot publish those test results on our website as we need to oversee the full chain-of-custody for the testing (for legal purposes) — from product purchasing to sending the product to the lab to reviewing and publishing the lab report — limiting any potential liability considerations.

Even with the above noted logical points supporting the possible additional benefits of participating in our new crowd-sourced model for this testing, we do want to reiterate that testing on your own for personal use is a completely reasonable course of action if you just want to know what the test results are for a product you eat (or your child eats) on a regular basis! The low level tests (that test down to a low threshold of detection of “less than 5 ppb”) are only available on the GoSimpleLab.com site (not on Amazon).

More info about the food testing we are doing can be found here:

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