On July 16, 2007, Spivak and Kissinger traveled to Paonia to interview Colburn. To Kissinger, the trip was a refreshing throwback to the shoe-leather school of journalism which she practiced much of her career. She explains:

I thought we should interview this lady This is where the old police reporter in me came out Susanne [Rust], who is a more modern gal, she does everything by email and on the Internet. I always think I want to smell the people Im writing about. I want to see whats in their closet and know whose picture they have on their desk.

The three-day trip yielded valuable information. Colburn described in detail the evolution of her view that, in humans as in animals, developing embryos exposed to endocrine disruptors through their mothers are at risk. You need the right hormones in the right place at the right time sending out the right signals, Colburn said. If thats fouled up prenatally, youre in trouble. But Colburns basement proved as useful as her living room. Thats where she kept more than 100 cartons of documents, the fruit of decades of work.

Basement . While Kissinger remained with Colburn, Spivak went to the basement to sift through the boxes. For seven hours, he examined papers. Youre just looking for anything that might be of value, he says. To his satisfaction, he found something significant: a 1998 press release from then-EPA Chief Browner. The press release announced fast-track EPA testing of 15,000 chemicals suspected as endocrine disruptors. This was an official statement of EPA intentions. Spivak was pleased because such a document would no longer have been on file at EPA. He could have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the document, but that could have taken six months to produce results. Besides, I wouldnt have known what I was looking for, he says. The team could use this.

Listen to Spivak talk about working in the basement:

Spivak also found numerous memos which gave us a sense of how political and how intense the fight was over endocrine disruptors. For example, a memo from a plastics industry trade group discussed how best to deal with the publication of Colburns 1996 book. It showed that it was a very aggressive fight, he recalls. Finally, he came across correspondence from activist groups that had brought suit to force the EPA to start screening: the National Resource Defense Council in 1999, and two other groups in 2001. In response, the EPA had promised to start in 2003. Spivak and Kissinger returned to Milwaukee determined to interview Browner, among others.

They were also looking forward to an experiment the team had come up withan audit of an ordinary home for plastics.