Lead Safe Mama Food Test Results: What They Don't Tell You About Lead in Food

If you’ve found this article, you’re probably searching for “Lead Safe Mama food test results” or “Tamara Rubin lead tests in food.” Maybe you’ve seen posts or social media reels warning that nearly every food is dangerously contaminated with lead. The numbers can look alarming, especially when shown without context.

But here’s the truth: focusing only on parts per billion (ppb) values without calculating how much lead you actually consume is not how toxicology works, and it often leads to fear that isn’t backed by actual risk. This post breaks down why — and gives you a transparent, science-based way to understand lead in food using the Actual LEAD Dose.

Who is Lead Safe Mama, and why are her food test results everywhere?

Tamara Rubin, also known as Lead Safe Mama, runs a popular blog and social media brand sharing lead test results on everything from mugs to baby food to thrift store finds. Her advocacy work began with legitimate concerns about high lead in vintage or imported products. But increasingly, the site publishes lab results showing ppb levels in foods, often implying that these represent an immediate health hazard.

The problem? Most of these posts:

• Show only the concentration in parts per million (ppm) or parts per billion (ppb) — not the actual amount someone consumes from eating a normal portion.

• Ignore established health-based intake guidelines, like those from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

• Leave out the well-known relationship between lead intake and blood lead levels (BLLs).

This approach gives people alarming numbers but no sense of scale — which is exactly how unnecessary panic spreads.

The FDA’s science on lead in food

The U.S. FDA is not ignoring lead. In fact, it’s been systematically studying lead levels in food for decades through the Total Diet Study (TDS), which ran over 7,000 individual lead tests on foods and beverages just between 2014 and 2019.

Here’s what they’ve determined based on that massive data set and extensive international health studies:

• Interim Reference Levels (IRLs) for dietary lead

  • 2.2 micrograms per day (µg/day) for children

  • 8.8 µg/day for women of childbearing ageThese intake limits are designed to keep blood lead levels (BLLs) around 0.35 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL), well below levels tied to significant IQ drops.

• Action Levels for baby and toddler foodsBecause young children are especially vulnerable, the FDA has also set specific maximum lead limits (action levels) in baby foods:

  • 10 ppb for fruits, non-root vegetables, mixtures, yogurts, custards, puddings, and single-ingredient meats.

  • 20 ppb for single-ingredient root vegetables like carrots and sweet potatoes (which absorb more lead from soil).

  • 20 ppb for dry infant cereals, often the first solid food babies eat.

These are carefully chosen to both protect health and keep nutritious foods available.

The real science: how lead gets into your body, and what it means

This is where many blog posts, including Lead Safe Mama’s food tests, skip the critical part: lead concentration in ppb is only half the story.

The real question is how much lead do you actually consume from a serving? That’s what determines your health risk. The relationship is clear:

• Every 1 µg of lead consumed daily raises BLL by approximately

  • 0.16 µg/dL in children

  • 0.04 µg/dL in adults(Lanphear et al., 2005; EFSA, 2013; FDA, 2022)

This means small amounts consumed occasionally generally do not meaningfully raise BLL. The FDA’s daily intake targets already account for lifetime exposure risk and are designed to keep BLLs extremely low.

The solution: calculating the Actual LEAD Dose

To make sense of all this, we use the Actual LEAD Dose. This directly tells you how many micrograms of lead are in the portion you eat. The formula is simple:

Actual LEAD Dose (µg)=ppb×grams per serving1000\text{Actual LEAD Dose (µg)} = \frac{\text{ppb} \times \text{grams per serving}}{1000}Actual LEAD Dose (µg)=1000ppb×grams per serving​

Once you know that, you can directly compare it to the FDA’s daily benchmarks. For example:

• A child’s daily target is 2.2 µg/day.

• A typical serving of food with 10 ppb lead at 100 grams (like a small cup of puree) gives:

10×1001000=1 µg\frac{10 \times 100}{1000} = 1 \text{ µg}100010×100​=1 µg

which is less than half the FDA daily limit for a child.

This is the kind of perspective that gets lost in fear-based posts.

Why it matters to question Lead Safe Mama food test results

When you see Lead Safe Mama’s charts showing ppb numbers for food, without calculating the Actual LEAD Dose, you’re not seeing the full picture. You’re seeing part of a lab report, without translating it into what you or your child actually ingest — or how it compares to well-established safety thresholds.

This matters. Unnecessary panic can lead families to avoid otherwise healthy foods or to distrust the comprehensive, multi-decade monitoring efforts that have dramatically reduced lead in the U.S. food supply.

The bottom line

Lead is a real neurotoxin with no safe threshold — that’s why the FDA, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and countless international agencies keep pushing levels lower. But it’s also why scientifically calculating the Actual LEAD Dose is the only honest way to evaluate food risk. It lets you translate parts per billion into actual micrograms per serving, tie it directly to blood lead implications, and compare it to rigorous daily limits designed to protect children and adults for life.

References

• Lanphear, B. P., et al. (2005). Low-Level Environmental Lead Exposure and Children’s Intellectual Function: An International Pooled Analysis. Environmental Health Perspectives, 113(7), 894–899.

• EFSA Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (2013). Scientific Opinion on Lead in Food. EFSA Journal, 11(4), 1570.

• FDA (2022). Closer to Zero: Updated Interim Reference Levels for Lead and Supporting Documents. U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

• FDA Total Diet Study. Data from 2014–2019 covering >7,000 individual food lead tests.