Hasbro, alerted consumers about injuries to children’s fingers from the ovens, first simply offering a repair kit, but then expanding to a full-fledged recall after dozens of additional injuries were reported. And evidence is widespread of hazardous products — even after recalls — being easy to find for sale, most notably imports from China that often are sold at discount shops or on the Internet. In one instance, Baltimore health officials found lead-contaminated toy rings in stores this year, three years after they had supposedly been pulled from shelves. A New Ingredient Stand ’n Seal seemed like the perfect do-it-yourself product when it came on the market in late 2003, for sale exclusively at Home Depot stores. Instead of having to use a paintbrush to apply waterproofing sealant to tile grout, customers could simply point the can and spray. A cardboard display at Home Depot stores featured a photograph of a mock customer doing just that — standing, with no mask, in front of a closed window, spraying the product onto a bathroom floor. In the spring of 2005, one of Roanoke’s suppliers — Easy Care Products of Scottsdale, Ariz. — switched the active ingredient from a chemical known as Zonyl 225, made by DuPont, to a chemical called Flexipel S-22WS, made by a tiny Georgia company, Innovative Chemical Technologies, according to company documents. Roanoke executives were initially unaware of the switch, which was made for reasons that remain unclear, corporate e-mail messages show. But only a few weeks after those reformulated cans reached Home Depot shelves, calls from customers, emergency rooms and doctors started to pour in to poison control centers and, initially in smaller numbers, to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s own hot line. Terri Keenan of Kyle, Tex., was one of those callers. Ms. Keenan used the spray in late May 2005 to seal tile in her kitchen and bathroom. Within an hour or so, she began feeling dizzy, thirsty and short of breath. Minutes later, she started foaming at the mouth; then she could not get up from the ground. Her husband rushed her to the hospital, where she remained for five days. “I just could not understand what was happening,” Ms. Keenan said in an interview. “It was a nightmare.” In another case, an 11-year-old Colorado boy, Tyler Himmelman, had stopped to speak to his father, who was using Stand ’n Seal on a bathroom shower, when the boy began coughing, struggling to breathe and then vomiting. He, too, ended up in the emergency room, where doctors said about 80 percent of the surface area of his lungs had been damaged, said Sandie Himmelman, his mother. Roanoke’s initial reaction to the reports was to try to manage their public relations impact, documents show. In early June, Richard F. Tripodi, Roanoke’s chief executive, asked a staff member fielding calls at a 24-hour emergency number not to tell customers reporting illnesses that others had called with similar complaints, documents show. Doing so “may cause unnecessary public concern,” the staff member wrote in a case file. Stand ’n Seal seemed to offer an easy means to a successful do-it-yourself home project. Federal law requires manufacturers to notify the Consumer Product Safety Commission within 24 hours after determining that a product defect might present a health hazard. In this case, several weeks passed before that report was made; it was not until mid-June 2005 that Roanoke notified the agency, and only after a physician from the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver, which also had been getting calls from emergency room doctors, told Roanoke that he planned to call the commission on his own. Commission staff members quickly contacted Roanoke. But internal company and agency documents, which have become public as a result of lawsuits, suggest Roanoke tried to play down the hazard. Roanoke explained that the revised Stand ’n Seal formula left it with a “somewhat less chemically pungent” smell, and that, as a result, “some customers tend to use the material in poorly ventilated or enclosed spaces.” It did not mention that a safety data sheet published by the maker of Flexipel S-22WS explicitly stated that it should not be used in aerosol form because it could cause respiratory injury. Internal company documents show that Roanoke knew that even with ventilation, the spray containing Flexipel could cause a medical reaction. A Roanoke executive tested it in an office bathroom, with the exhaust fan running. “I actually forgot I was performing a test and found myself leaning over the floor as I sprayed,” wrote the executive, Michelle Kascak, Roanoke vice president for research, in an e-mail message to Mr. Tripodi, her boss, before the recall. After the three-minute test, Ms. Kascak wrote that she had a mild headache, dizziness and sinus irritation. Mr. Tripodi’s reply: “Please instruct us where to send the body when the test is complete.” Jokes aside, Mr. Tripodi made it clear that he wanted to ensure the product remained on the market. “We are doing everything to convince the Home Depot that there is no reason to take these batches off the shelf,” said one e-mail message Mr. Tripodi sent to a business associate in July 2005, as the company was negotiating the recall. Nearly three months passed between the time Roanoke first received a report of an illness and the official recall by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a period during which dozens were sickened. They included Phillip Willis III, 73, a retired Navy officer, from Pasco County, Fla., and Thomas Kayser, 64, of Independence, Iowa, a retired John Deere