Intro -- David Burmaster LO466

David E. Burmaster (deb@Alceon.com)
Sat, 18 Mar 1995 10:23:07 -0500

Dear Friends;

Hi, my name is Dave. I run a small engineering consulting company in
Cambridge, MA, called Alceon Corporation.

We offer engineering services to private companies and individuals who
have the mis-fortune of owning a piece of property regulated by a federal
or state angecy as a hazardous waste site. In particular, we do a type of
study called a "human risk assessment" -- a type of report required under
various laws and regulations....

So, I do have an issue... but maybe you have already discussed??

How can we innovate successfully in a heavily regulated industry?

In our case, the US Environmental Protection Agency regulates the content
and methods used in a risk assessment.... It is not unfair to say that the
Agency' manuals rely on 8th-grade science...

As an MIT graduate, I want to raise the standard of practice and innovate
on behalf of our clients...... I have published 27 papers in refereed
journals describing a wide variety of new methods to do risk assessments,
but the US EPA has pretty much rejected them all.....

Privately, the US EPA reviewers agree that our methods are correct... but
they cannot accept the new ideas on site-specific risk assessments because
the new methods are not in the Agency's manuals.... and they have
basically no interest in updating their manuals.....

Our company was formed on the idea that we could win market share by using
innovative methods for our clients, but we are stalled at every turn.....

Any suggestions or observations??

Dave
David E. Burmaster
Alceon Corporation
Cambridge, MA
deb@Alceon.com (David E. Burmaster)