The settlement is the largest civil administrative penalty the Environmental Protection Agency has ever levied under any federal environmental statue.

Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, is used to make fluoropolymers, a class of non-stick and stain-resistant materials. A science advisory board convened earlier this year by the EPA found it to be a likely carcinogen.

"This settlement sends a strong message that companies are responsible for promptly informing EPA about risk information associated with their chemicals," said Granta Nakayama of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.

It also allows the company to put the matter behind it and move forward, said DuPont general counsel Stacey Mobley. "We have already cut PFOA emissions from U.S. plant sites by 98%, and we are committed to reducing those emissions by 99% by 2007."

The settlement amount under federal law could have gone as high as $300 million. While $300 million would have meant something to DuPont, "$16 million is really just a rounding error," to the chemical giant, said Frank Mitsch, a senior chemical analyst with Fulcrum Global Partners in New York.

DuPont stock closed down 10 cents a share, at $43.18. "Obviously the stock's not reacting to it one way or the other, so that gives you an idea of what the Street thinks about it," Mitsch said.

DuPont's violations were "multiple failures to report information to EPA about substantial risk of injury to human health or the environment that DuPont obtained about PFOA," said the EPA release, including:

*Withholding 2001 test results that showed levels of PFOA in the blood of people living near DuPont's Washington Works facility in West Virginia.

*Failing to report a 1997 test on the risk of inhaling PFOA that killed all the rats tested.

*Withholding information from 1991 about the contamination of public drinking-water supplies near the West Virginia plant.

*Withholding 1981 findings that at least one pregnant worker at that plant passed PFOA to her fetus.

The $6.25 million for Supplemental Environmental Projects will go toward investigating the potential of nine of its fluorotelomer-based products to break down into PFOA.

DuPont will also fund a science curriculum in West Virginia schools designed to reduce risks posed by chemicals in schools and further long-term goals of safe science through "green" chemistry.

-- Elizabeth Weise (USA Today)