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

Updated: March 2025

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 $575 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 Testing To Date:

    1. $0 — Cost of Tamara Rubin’s time to support this initiative (Tamara is volunteering her time for this initiative)
    2. $100 to $498— Cost of laboratory testing
      • Cost is for “Ultra Low Level Testing” 
      • Cost is for testing ONE product for Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, & Arsenic
      • Cost range includes the fact that we have had to test about 20% of items multiple times (when low thresholds of detection do not meet our specifications)
      • Cost can be higher than noted in this range if we included testing for other metals (depending on the lab used)
    3. $2 to $450 — Cost of product to be tested (food, supplement, personal care products, cosmetics)
      • $38.00 is our approximate typical  product 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 (from 5 to 100 grams of material – depending on the lab and testing done)
      • Our product cost range to date has been from about $2 on the low-end, for a can of specialty soda to about $450.00 on the high-end, to purchase sufficient quantity of some very expensive vitamins/ supplements (sold in low quantities).
      • 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).
    4. $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).
    5. $180 to $325 — 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 the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC
    6. TOTAL: $317 to $1,323 — Total Estimated Cost Range (Midpoint: $830.00) 
      • Typical Cost To Date (for past 12 month period): $654.50
      • Anticipated Average Cost for 2025: $605.50
      • GoFundMe Goal / Testing Sponsorship Cost Set at $575.00 per item 

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.

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! 

As of March of 2025, Lead Safe Mama, LLC is no longer using the services of SimpleLab as their costs to come closer to meeting our testing needs increased and they were also not able to consistently meet our requirements for ultra low level thresholds of detection. For your information, the low level testing through SimpleLab is not available on Amazon – it is only available on their website. Their current pricing (on their website for Low level testing (for Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, & Arsenic for one product, with a low threshold of detection of “less than 5 ppb” for each metal tested for) are (on 3/29/2025):

  • $239  – Low Level Testing of Food Products
  • $249 –  Low Level Testing of  Cosmetics / Personal Care Products
  • $249 – Low Level Testing of  Supplement Products

To address some misinformation floating around online: In addition to contributing 8 pro-bono tests each month – for several months over the past year, SimpleLab always charged us full retail for their testing. We did not mark up this rate at all, nor make any profit on the testing we did using their service.

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