WASHINGTON — A hormone-like chemical should be taken out of food packaging, especially baby bottles, infant formula cans and other products used by children and pregnant women, university researchers told a Food and Drug Administration subcommittee yesterday.

The FDA has said that the chemical, bisphenol A, or BPA, doesn't pose a risk at the levels to which people are commonly exposed. BPA has been detected in the bodies of virtually all Americans tested.

But critics questioned why the FDA based that ruling on three studies funded by the chemical industry, all of which found BPA to be safe at current exposure levels.

Hundreds of independent studies in animals and cells suggest the estrogen-like chemical poses serious risks.

The newest research — the first large study in humans — links BPA to both heart disease and diabetes in adults. Adults with the highest BPA levels in their urine were more than twice as likely to have heart disease or diabetes than those with the lowest levels, according to the study of 1,455 people, published online yesterday in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The total number of people with these conditions was small: 79 had heart disease and 136 had diabetes.

FDA scientist Laura Tarantino said the agency relied on industry studies because they were large and included raw data, which allows the FDA to independently verify the findings.

But Frederick vom Saal, a reproductive scientist at the University of Missouri at Columbia and one of the first to document evidence of health problems in rodents exposed to low doses of BPA, said the industry studies' flaws make them useless in deciding on a safe exposure level for BPA.

"The FDA is ignoring all of this research," vom Saal said. "While it has been doing that, Americans have been at risk."

Data on the health status of the study subjects, who ranged in age from 18 to 74, came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The BPA levels in the study were below those the government deemed safe.

The FDA regulates the compound's use in plastic food containers, bottles, tableware and the plastic linings of food cans. In light of the controversy surrounding the chemical, the agency is reviewing its policy. It issued a draft statement last month that repeated its position that BPA is safe for food and beverage packaging, but it also tapped six outside scientists to review the scientific literature and make a recommendation to agency officials, who are expected to make a final decision on BPA next month.

USA Today, Washington Post and Associated Press contributed to this report.