In the midst of the scare over E. coli-contaminated spinach last fall, 87 percent of Americans said they were aware of the resulting recall. But 13 percent of the people who ate fresh spinach before the recall kept eating it afterward, even though most knew they shouldn't, according to research from Rutgers University's Food Policy Institute.

If that can happen when the news media is all over a story and the government is making scary pronouncements, imagine what happens when, say, a toaster sold three years ago with a possibly defective heating element is recalled. More than a few consumers, if they hear the news at all, shrug and keep on toasting.

As Americans worry through a string of recent, high-profile recalls involving everything from peanut butter to pet food to toothpaste to canned hot dog sauce and toys with lead paint, experts acknowledge the nation's consumption engine does "full-speed-ahead" much better than it does "Whoa, Nellie." From making the recall decision to getting the word out to convincing consumers, there are all sorts of gaps.

It's one of the reasons the rash of problems lately with products made in China has set off alarm bells. The best place to assure product safety is at the plant or the farm. Once something gets into the retail distribution system, getting it back out requires a whole lot of scrambling.

"The point is to be sure the food is being made right in the first place," said Sandy Glatter, senior director of quality assurance for O'Hara-based grocer Giant Eagle.

The Consumer Federation of America is calling for increased funding for government efforts to keep out unsafe products, tougher penalties for manufacturers and more independent testing of finished goods to reduce the need for recalls.

Still, recalls seem unlikely to disappear, for even the most careful companies can have problems. While government officials say the market is full of problem-free merchandise, including goods from China, the issue now is how to hit the eject button more effectively.

One problem is that there are so many recalls.

Fast-track systems set up by the government to encourage companies to move quickly when they identify problems have helped avoid foot-dragging by corporate executives. But with so many items pulled, and some of them apparently low risk, consumers have started tuning out.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported companies voluntarily pulled 471 products during fiscal 2006, the largest number in at least a decade, affecting about 124 million individual items.

This month alone, the CPSC's Web site listed recalls for drinking glasses, computer batteries, outdoor lounge chairs, horseback riding stirrups, window blinds, bicycles and sandal clogs to name a few. That's in addition to the big Mattel announcement warning of problems with Polly Pocket and Doggie Day Care toys on the heels of an earlier recall that derailed some Thomas the Tank Engine pieces.

2,500 to 3,000 recalls a year
The commission isn't the only federal agency announcing recalls. Others may come from the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency.

Between 2,500 and 3,000 recalls are issued every year, according to Dirk C. Gibson, associate professor of mass communication at the University of New Mexico.

Getting the word out to the right people isn't easy. Many agencies and companies issue press releases to alert retailers and consumers, but the news media don't publicize them all, something baffling to officials who see lottery numbers appearing in the paper daily. Retailers may post signs in their stores but consumers may miss them.

Technology is seen as a tool to get around that problem. In 2003, the government created www.recalls.gov, a Web site meant to gather information on all federal product recalls in one place.

This spring, the Consumer Products Safety Commission launched a push to get at least a million consumers to sign up for e-mail notification of recalls through the agency's Web site, www.cpsc.gov. A check earlier this month found 130,000 consumers had signed up so far.

The direct approach has proven effective in other situations. Because of registration information kept on file, car owners typically get personal letters alerting them to problems. Such recalls tend to have a 50 to 60 percent effective response rate, said Edward J. Heiden, president of a Washington, D.C., firm that has studied recall effectiveness for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

That's a pretty high response considering recall rates for many low-priced consumer products may be in the single digits, he said.

Low return rates don't always mean consumers haven't addressed the problem.

In the case of the recall years ago of some inexpensive hair dryers, for example, Dr. Heiden said follow-up research found some people just threw them away. Even when the manufacturer offered to pay for postage and a replacement, the customer would have had to pack the dryer up and get it to the post office.

"Consumers seem to balance effort with hazard in products," said Dr. Heiden. Sometimes people figure they can fix something themselves or they decide the identified problem doesn't appear to affect their particular piece. In the case of a car or truck, they may be more likely to act since a problem could manifest itself in much more dangerous and potentially disastrous ways.

Manufacturers might find it easier to make personal contact if more consumers filled out warranty cards, but that can be a pain. Some consumers think the manufacturer will use the information more for marketing than safety, bombarding customers with direct mail and phone solicitations or possibly even selling the information to others who will do the same.

There have been calls for retailers to start collecting contact information at the cash register, in the same way they now ask for ZIP codes or phone numbers for marketing purposes. There's also potential for product tracking in the growing use of radio frequency identification tags that provide a unique number for every piece sold, but that technology still has expense and privacy issues.

As the recent Mattel/Fisher Price incidents illustrate, recalls that involve toys or other children's products typically get people's attention. Parents are focused on safety issues, yet even they find it hard to keep up. "You'd literally spend all of your time looking up Web sites and reading recalls," said Dr. Gibson.

Close attention to food
Food recalls often create excitement, for obvious reasons. But they have other problems that can curtail their effectiveness. By the time government officials figure out exactly what is making people sick, much of it has already been eaten.

"Most Americans don't know the symptoms of food-borne illness," said William K. Hallman, director of Rutgers' Food Policy Institute, which researched the response to last year's spinach recall. (The research was aimed in part at understanding issues that might occur if terrorists intentionally tampered with food.)

Another problem in food recalls is that canned products such as those in the recent Castleberry's Foods Co. botulism-related recall can sit forgotten in the pantry. Castleberry's makes products for other companies, which sell them under many names, including Kroger, Meijer and Food Club.

Sophisticated computer systems have made it simpler to pull items out of supermarket chains. O'Hara grocer Giant Eagle is even exploring using contact information gathered from its Advantage card users to alert them to recalls on items they've purchased.

Yet smaller stores buying products from third parties might not get the word or have quick ways to identify tainted product. Castleberry's tried to address that issue by sending out audit teams to inspect retail outlets. They had checked more than 17,500 stores as of the end of July.

The FDA was also sending out people to try to make sure items were pulled. "We really put out a blitz on that one," said agency spokeswoman Cathy McDermott.

No matter how big, fast and loud the warning, there's no guarantee consumers will hear and understand the message. When the Rutgers researchers studied the results of 1,200 phone interviews with Americans in 50 states after last year's spinach recall, they found, for example, 44 percent of those surveyed thought washing fresh spinach would make it safe to eat, which wasn't true, and 18 percent stopped buying other bagged produce because of the recall, which was unnecessary.

Sending the all-clear signal is also an inexact process. Although the FDA issued a statement in late September that consumers could be confident about bagged spinach grown outside of three counties in California, two months later, more than 30 percent of those surveyed either thought the recall was still in effect or weren't sure.

As for those consumers who ate spinach during the recall despite being aware of the issue, the researchers are still interested in finding out why, said Dr. Hallman. Maybe they figured they'd take their chances -- or maybe they just knew the farmer who grew their spinach and were confident it was safe.