Cynthia McKeown is a Boston-based, award-winning filmmaker and director/producer of Unacceptable Risk. Her work has been screened internationally at festivals and conferences and broadcast internationally. She’s a former producer at WGBH television and was associate director of digital communications at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where she managed the first-ever Forum on Cancer and the Environment to help clinicians and researchers gain a broader understanding of the role of chemicals in the development of cancer.
Dr. Laurel Schaider is a Senior Scientist at Silent Spring Institute in Newton, where she leads the Institute’s water quality research on PFAS chemicals and other contaminants of emerging concern. Her research focuses on characterizing PFAS exposures from drinking water, diet, and consumer products, understanding health effects associated with PFAS, investigating socioeconomic disparities in exposures to drinking water contaminants, and working with communities to develop research studies and resources to address their concerns.
Brian Dellascio is a cancer survivor and patient/community advocate. His cancer, diagnosed when he was a teenager in 1991, was found to be related to chemical contamination of the drinking water in Wilmington, Massachusetts, where he grew up, and was part of a larger childhood cancer cluster in Wilmington in the 1990s and early 2000s.