WASHINGTON — A federal health panel yesterday for the first time acknowledged concerns that a chemical found in thousands of everyday products such as baby bottles and CDs may cause cancer and other serious disorders.

The draft report by the National Toxicology Program, an office of the National Institutes of Health, signaled a turning point in the government’s position on bisphenola, or BPA, so ubiquitous in American society that it has been detected in the urine of 93% of the population over 6 years of age.

Last year, another expert panel using outside scientists minimized the health risks of BPA, but its findings were widely assailed after a congressional investigation found that a firm hired to perform scientific analysis was also working for the chemical industry.

Used in plastic production since the 1950s, BPA in laboratory animals may be linked to breast cancer, prostrate cancer, early puberty in females, and behavioral changes, according to the study. Although the National Toxicology Program has no power to regulate BPA, its findings are used by other federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, which set safe exposure limits to chemicals. “What we’ve got is a warning, a signal, of some concerns,” said Mike Shelby, the director of the Center for Evaluation for Risks to Human Reproduction, who oversaw the report. “We could not dismiss the possibility that similar or related effects might occur in humans “