An investigation · DetectLead · May 2026
Who is Tamara Rubin, really?
If you've been following Lead Safe Mama, you've gotten real numbers, real awareness, and a real warning about a real public health problem. You probably have not gotten the public-records side. I sent her $145,000. Then I went looking at the paper trail.
What follows is the short version. The long one, with every line item, every public-records citation, and every active case, is at the full investigation essay.
The short version
$145,000
paid in
Six contracts and assorted invoices to Tamara Rubin / Lead Safe Mama, March 2023 through early 2024.
9
felony counts
Oregon DOJ brought nine counts of theft of public services against her in 2017 over her 501(c)(3). Later dropped. Records public.
$600,000
she's demanding
From me, plus a permanent gag and destruction of the FOIA documents I lawfully received. I do not destroy public records.
3
federal cases
Ritter v Rubin (EDNY), Ritter v AA Wipes (EDNY), Lumetallix v Ritter (EDNY). All dockets are public.
What I paid for. What got delivered.
In the spring of 2023, after she misidentified a Chinese counterfeit of my product as my product on her blog, I paid her $350 for a 90-minute consultation. At the end of it she offered to fix my Amazon listings. That was the first invoice. Here is the rest of the ledger, by my own wire records.
amount
what it was billed for · what was delivered
$7,000
Amazon listing audit. Rewrites that narrowed my use cases. "Do not use on dishes." Competing products were not encumbered. My sales declined that summer.
$90,000
NYC subway banner advertising campaign for Fluoro-Spec. She insisted on the full run, not a split test. I picked up about eighty pounds of unused banner paper from Outfront Media. Not a single banner, article, video, or newsletter mention of Fluoro-Spec was published. She blamed an "international patent" that did not exist.
$30,000
Editorial deliverables. By my count, not delivered.
$15,000
Three sponsored video collaborations. She produced one, uploaded it, deleted it, refused to send me the file, and counted the deleted video as $5,000 of work delivered.
$9,600
Newsletter sponsorship. At some point during the run she unsubscribed me and every address in my contact list from the newsletter. I could not verify the sponsorship was running.
$7,500
Lead-safety educational PDFs. To my knowledge, not produced.
−$5,000
Wire from her, Dec 31 2023. No memo, no contract reference, no explanation in the two years since.
$145,000
Total in. Zero articles, zero banners verifiably deployed, zero videos retained, zero newsletters verifiable, zero PDFs produced.
This is not me losing an argument with a colleague. This is a documented advertising contract that produced no advertising.
The public record on Lead Safe Mama.
When her behavior toward me changed, I filed FOIA requests in three jurisdictions and pulled the federal docket. None of what follows is private. All of it is in the public files I lawfully obtained.
9 felony counts.
The Oregon Department of Justice charged her with nine counts of theft of public services in 2017 in connection with her 501(c)(3), Lead Safe America Foundation. The charges were later dropped. The charity was dissolved. The XRF gun and storage facility carried on the charity's books transferred to her personal control during dissolution.
"Loans" via TR.
Per the public records, funds moved out of the charity's account into accounts in her personal name with memo lines reading via TR. No W-2s. No 1099s. No salary drawn. Transfers retroactively characterized as loans. When auditors arrived she submitted approximately 2,300 pages compiled after the fact. The IRS subsequently issued a no-change letter on the records she submitted.
The house fire file.
State Farm investigators concluded the house was substantially empty at the time of the 2002 fire. Closets empty. Kitchen empty. No furniture in the principal rooms. State Farm declined the claim. She then filed a federal casualty loss of approximately $400,000 in personal property and carried it forward on her taxes for fifteen years.
Rubin v Oregon.
Rubin v Oregon, 22-35640, decided by the Ninth Circuit in 2023. Public docket. Read it yourself.
$600K, gag, destroy FOIA.
In 2024 her counsel sent a letter demanding $600,000 in settlement, a permanent non-disparagement agreement, and that I destroy the FOIA documents I had lawfully received from the State of Oregon and Multnomah County. I do not destroy public records.
Ritter v Rubin.
Ritter v Rubin, Eastern District of New York, 2-26-cv-00414. Fraud in the inducement, breach of contract, unjust enrichment. The docket is public. Two related federal cases are also live: Ritter v AA Wipes and Lumetallix v Ritter (counterclaim by me).
I am leaving out almost everything I cannot personally attest to or document with public records. What I am willing to say in print is the floor, not the ceiling.
Why I'm not trying to keep you on lead.
A long-running content channel about lead has a structural problem nobody talks about. The bigger the audience, the higher the cost of solving the audience's problem. If every reader actually got lead out of their life and walked away, the channel ends. If readers stay anxious and keep checking back for new test results, the channel survives. The business model and the mission point in opposite directions.
That is the gap. Awareness without an instrument in your hand is a subscription, not a solution. The Lead Safe Mama operating mode, by my reading of seventeen years of her output, is to keep you alarmed indefinitely and to keep you donating, while never giving you the tool that would let you stop checking.
I am trying to do the opposite. I want you off lead, and I want you off this site. The fastest path from where you are now to "I solved this and moved on" is the actual instrument in your kitchen drawer, plus the dose math, plus the database. Those three things, used together, end the loop.
The tools to end your loop.
Free where they can be. Cheap where they can't. All built so you stop needing them, not so you stay.
Free · the dose math
bloodleadcalculator.com
Enter what your kid eats. Returns the actual µg/day exposure and the predicted blood lead level. Not a yes-or-no on a brand. A number that means something.
go to calculator → Free · the databasecheck-your-dish
Lead Safe Mama's XRF data, combined with independent labs, brand disclosures, and our own scans. With dose translation. Search by brand and pattern.
search the database → Free · for new parents/baby
Bottles, dishes, baby food, paint, in one place. Built to be the only page a new parent needs.
new parent page → $50 · the instrumentFluoro-Spec FS-1D
The drop. The 365 nm light. Lead-paint dust glows green to the naked eye. Field-visible. 500 chances per bottle. About 12 cents per check.
see the kit → Free · the scienceThe bench data
38 LBP particles XRF-confirmed. 100% above 40 µm fluoresce. Zero false positives across nine controls. Full write-up and raw data.
read the study → Free · the full essayThe long investigation
The entire $145,000 timeline, the conference, the Lumetallix story, the lawsuits, the cease-and-desist, with citations. About a 12-minute read.
read the full essay →Eric Ritter
Founder, Fluoro-Spec Inc. Built the field-detection chemistry at Spirochaete Research Labs in East Setauket, NY. Lead-poisoned myself in 2017. This page reflects my own opinion and my own documented experience, reviewed by counsel. All factual statements are tied to public records or to my own wire records and contracts.
Standing offer for response
If Tamara Rubin would like to respond to this page, my contact information is the same it was when she stopped responding two years ago. I will publish her response in full, unedited, on this page, with no commentary, if she sends one.
If she prefers to respond through counsel, my counsel's contact information is on the docket of all three federal cases referenced here. I will accept service of any filing that does not first ask me to destroy public records.
Sources: Oregon DOJ records (FOIA), Multnomah County DA file (FOIA), State Farm 2002 investigation file (FOIA), IRS audit correspondence 2017, Ninth Circuit Rubin v Oregon 22-35640 (2023), federal dockets EDNY 2-26-cv-00414 and related, my own wire records and contracts. None of this is private. Updated May 2026.