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

    How polluted we are

    Most people carry traces of toxic pollutiants, including metals, pesticides, and phthalates.

  2. Health & Medicine

    A different GI link to colon cancers

    As they head for the stomach from the mouth, the carbohydrates in vegetables, breads, fruits, and candy all begin breaking down into simple sugars. According to some studies, carbs with a low glycemic index (GI)–meaning that they are digested slowly–reduce a persons risk of heart disease and obesity through an as yet unidentified mechanism linked […]

  3. Earth

    POPs in the butter

    Governments may be able to monitor trends in the release and transport of persistent organic pollutants by sampling butter.

  4. Earth

    Leaden calcium supplements

    Consuming calcium along with lead limits, and may prevent, the body's absorption of the toxicant.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Chocolate-science news

    Make no mistake: Chocolate is not a health food. Indeed, most portions are loaded with empty calories from sugar and saturated fats. Hershey Foods Corp. Several studies in recent years, however, have demonstrated that among sweets, chocolate may possess a few nutritional advantages over most calorie-rich alternatives. The latest of these good-news findings is a […]

  6. Earth

    Diesels: NO rises with altitude

    The combustion chemistry of heavy-duty diesel trucks changes with altitude.

  7. Earth

    Passive smoking’s carcinogenic traces

    Researchers isolated markers of a cigarette-generated carcinogen in urine of nonsmoking women married to smokers.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Soy slashes cancer-fostering hormones (with recipe)

    Asian women tend to have much lower breast-cancer rates than their Western counterparts–unless they move to Europe or North America. Then the cancers incidence in these women begins to match local norms. United Soybean Board This observation has suggested that something about the Western way of life, probably diet, promotes cancer–or that something about Eastern […]

  9. Humans

    Where’s the Book?

    Innovative curricula are moving science education away from a reliance on textbooks.

  10. Humans

    Errant Texts

    New studies lambaste popular middle-school science texts for being uninspiring, superficial, and error-ridden.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Berry promising anticancer prospects

    Twelve years ago, scientists uncovered a mechanism to explain why the folk remedy of eating cranberries fights urinary tract infections. It now appears that the medicinal powers of the pucker-inducing berries might extend to breast cancer as well. Cranberry Marketing Committee For years, Najla Guthrie and her colleagues at the University of Western Ontario in […]

  12. Humans

    I do solemnly swear. . .

    An international science organization is surveying codes of ethics from around the world as a first step towards considering whether scientists globally need an analog of the Hippocratic Oath.