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. Tech

    Antarctic test of novel ice drill poised to begin

    Any day now, a team of 40 scientists and support personnel expects to begin using a warm, high pressure jet of water to bore a 30 centimeter hole through 83 meters of ice. Once it breaks through to the sea below, they’ll have a few days to quickly sample life from water before the hole begins freezing up again. It's just a test. But if all goes well, in a few weeks the team will move 700 miles and bore an even deeper hole to sample for freshwater life that may have been living for eons outside even indirect contact with Earth’s atmosphere.

  2. Climate

    Climate change goes to extremes

    Some recent weird weather tied to warming.

  3. Humans

    This snowbird is really going SOUTH

    Many people of a certain age (like my folks) enjoy flying south to warmer climes when winter weather threatens. I’m also flying south this December — but not to warm up. As a guest of the National Science Foundation, I’ll be checking out summer in the really deep South: Antarctica. Temps expected at certain sites I’m scheduled to visit, such as the South Pole, threaten to surpass the worst that my hometown will encounter in the dead of winter.

  4. Life

    Immune disease an added blow to fungus-ridden bat populations

    Rare immune complication previously seen only in people devastates animals that had appeared to evade white nose syndrome.

  5. Earth

    Gulf spill harmed small fish, studies indicate

    Effects vary but dire impacts seen with some very low exposures.

  6. Science & Society

    Air: The Restless Shaper of the World

    by William Bryant Logan.

  7. Climate

    Extremely Bad Weather

    Teasing out global warming's role in worsening hurricanes, droughts and other extreme events.

  8. Environment

    Elevated carbon dioxide may impair reasoning

    Insufficient ventilation allows exhaled gas to build up indoors, diminishing decision-making abilities.

  9. Earth

    Fish in mom’s diet may alter kids’ behavior

    Eating fish that's low in mercury during pregnancy may reduce the risk that a woman's child shows signs of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

  10. Spider man fell for jumpers

    View the videos The recently named Lapsias lorax spider got its name from the Dr.Seuss character with a yellow mustache. Courtesy W. Maddison/Beaty Museum Wayne Maddison examines a tiny but venomous snake caught along with spiders shaken from tree branches. Snakes are one hazard Maddison faces in the tropics, along with leeches, wasps and more. […]

  11. Health & Medicine

    Tricks Foods Play

    Most people would never equate downing a well-dressed salad or a fried chicken thigh with toking a joint of marijuana. But to Joseph Hibbeln of the National Institutes of Health, the comparison isn’t a big stretch.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Infrared light offers promise of laser-sharp cancer therapy

    Laser technique targets tumors with reduced risk of side effects compared with conventional chemotherapy.