Janet Raloff

Janet Raloff

Editor, Digital, Science News Explores

Editor Janet Raloff has been a part of the Science News Media Group since 1977. While a staff writer at Science News, she covered the environment, toxicology, energy, science policy, agriculture and nutrition. She was among the first to give national visibility to such issues as electromagnetic pulse weaponry and hormone-mimicking pollutants, and was the first anywhere to report on the widespread tainting of streams and groundwater sources with pharmaceuticals. A founding board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, her writing has won awards from groups including the National Association of Science Writers. In July 2007, while still writing for Science News, Janet took over Science News Explores (then known as Science News for Kids) as a part-time responsibility. Over the next six years, she expanded the magazine's depth, breadth and publication cycle. Since 2013, she also oversaw an expansion of its staffing from three part-timers to a full-time staff of four and a freelance staff of some 35 other writers and editors. Before joining Science News, Janet was managing editor of Energy Research Reports (outside Boston), a staff writer at Chemistry (an American Chemical Society magazine) and a writer/editor for Chicago's Adler Planetarium. Initially an astronomy major, she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (with an elective major in physics).

All Stories by Janet Raloff

  1. Earth

    Excreted Drugs: Something Looks Fishy

    Drugs that the body can't fully use enter waste water, where they may affect aquatic life—or wind up in tap water.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Home Cooking on the Wane

    Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Passover are among the few holidays on which home-cooked meals remain the norm. On most other days of the year, a large and growing share of U.S. diners happily leave the cooking of at least one meal to professionals. Eating in. Eating out. Home cooking used to signify meals with a healthy […]

  3. Earth

    Algal bloom is smothering Florida coral

    The anomalous growth of a native alga—now blanketing the seabed in a huge swath off the southern coast of Florida—points to overfertilization with upwelling sewage.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Diets to Ward Off Diabetes

    Some 16 million people in the United States have type 2 diabetes, which used to be called the disorder’s “adult onset” form. In fact, its incidence has been skyrocketing, climbing by nearly 50 percent over the past decade alone. Even children are now developing type 2 diabetes, which is characterized by the body’s resistance to […]

  5. Earth

    Taming Toxic Tides

    A growing international cadre of scientists is exploring a simple strategy for controlling toxic algal blooms: flinging dirt to sweep the algae from the water.

  6. Earth

    Rural living may hobble sperm

    An epidemiological study provides evidence that sperm concentrations in men residing in rural areas are significantly lower than those of men living in urban centers.

  7. Earth

    Dioxin cuts the chance of fathering a boy

    More girls than boys are fathered by men who sustained a relatively high environmental exposure to dioxin from a 1976 factory explosion in Italy.

  8. Earth

    Finned Pollution Is One Cost of Our Exotic Tastes

    Diners in most countries are accustomed to having an international array of foods in their pantries and eateries. It started more than a millennium ago when spice traders plied the caravan routes linking China to Istanbul. From Turkey, traders shipped their condiments throughout Europe and eventually to the New World. Northern or Chinese snakehead (Channa […]

  9. Health & Medicine

    Salt trial provokes DASH of skepticism

    Though a new study finds that dramatic salt restriction can lower blood pressure, even among people without hypertension, some critics challenge its value in setting new dietary guidelines for all adults.

  10. Earth

    Pesticides block male hormones

    Some common pesticides can block the ability of androgens, male sex hormones, to trigger normal gene activities.

  11. Earth

    Weed killer feminizes fish

    The weed killer atrazine can turn normally hermaphroditic fish into females, a new study shows.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Young Women Don’t Bone Up on Soy

    Among the many reported nutritional benefits of diets rich in soy is a strengthening of bone in postmenopausal women. For these Golden Girls, who face an increasing risk of osteoporosis, soy-based foods can provide much-needed assistance in limiting the inevitable loss of bone. Although soybeans are best known for their oil, their protein is also […]