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

    Copenhagen Meeting Highlights

    Find all the Science News coverage of the 2009 United Nation's climate summit in one place.

  2. Humans

    Copenhagen climate summit yields ‘real deal’ to limit greenhouse gases

    Nonbinding accord still needs beefing up, negotiators agree.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Vast majority of teens are sleep-deprived

    Most adolescents need at least eight hours of zzzzz’s a night, studies show, and ideally should garner at least nine. A new study tells us just how many kids meet their slumber quota: a whopping 7.6 percent.

  4. Humans

    Pet tarantulas can pose a hairy threat

    A new medical case report reaffirms why even largely non-venomous tarantulas can make questionable pets. Some respond to stress by expelling a cloud of barbed hairs that can lodge in especially vulnerable tissues. Like your eyeball.

  5. Earth

    Danish sustainability: From coats to undies

    The United Nations climate change conference may be over, but Denmark’s interest in climate-protection issues isn’t. Case in point: an exhibit at the Danish Design Center. Across the street from Copenhagen’s famed Tivoli Gardens, local fashion-design students are showcasing their idea of another type of greens – fashion-forward clothes that are kind to Mother Nature.

  6. Chemistry

    Climate deal reached, importance debated

    “Finally, we sealed the deal. And it is a real deal,” said United Nations Secretary General Ban ki-Moon this morning at an 11:15 press briefing. He was referring to a new climate accord – one aimed at reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions and setting up a green trust fund for mitigation and adaptation programs in the world’s poorest countries, ones that are already being hammered by a changing climate.

  7. Climate

    Climate: Deal or no deal?

    We’ve got a climate accord, President Barack Obama said at a parting press conference tonight (at about 11 to 11:30 p.m. local time, before leaving Denmark). Not so fast, argue a number of other negotiating blocs...like the G77.

  8. Climate

    Climate: China defends its reputation

    Over the past few days, a number of national delegations – not least the United States’ – have criticized implicitly, if not explicitly, China’s unwillingness to accept binding limits on its greenhouse-gas emissions and the measurement of emissions by outside auditors. This morning, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao addressed a plenary meeting of the United Nations climate-change conference – populated by more than 100 heads of heads of state – to make his case that China has embarked on an earnest step toward substantive climate protection.

  9. Climate

    Obama: Climate’s rock star

    A little over a half-hour ago, President Barack Obama wrapped up a stirring pep talk to his fellow world leaders attending the United Nations climate change meeting. He didn’t promise the world. Only that the United States could be depended upon to do its part in helping stem global greenhouse gas emissions and to fund measures that would help fund the world’s poorest and climate-beleaguered nations adapt. But what was especially interesting was to watch how the whole climate conference has waited with baited breath to learn what Obama would say: Could our President make promises that would at last galvanize action in the United States and accord among countries whose views, even yesterday, seemed poles apart?

  10. Climate

    Climate emissions mandates: What role China and India?

    One major schism between negotiating blocs at the United Nations climate change meeting is over which nations should face a mandate to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions. Just the industrial powers that have historically spewed most of the carbon dioxide responsible for today’s climate troubles? Or that group and the newly emerging industrial leaders – especially China, who for several years has reigned as the world’s greenhouse-gas king? The deadline for resolving this dilemma is ostensibly quite imminent. As in today.

  11. Climate

    Tiny Tuvalu could quash climate deal

    Prime Minister Apisai Ielemia brags that his tiny 9-island state of Tuvalu is the world’s smallest independent country. Its 10,000 inhabitants live an average of 2 meters above sea level, which makes their homeland highly vulnerable to disappearing with even modest sea-level rise. With the nation’s survival so dependent on climate protection, he vowed today that Tuvalu will not sign onto any climate-change accord that does not require “legally-binding” language and programs aimed at ensuring global temperatures peak at “well below” 1.5 oC. That could effectively torpedo hopes for a climate accord tomorrow when the United Nations climate change meeting is slated to wrap up.

  12. Climate

    U.S. backs $100-billion-a-year plan for climate adaptation

    Blog from Copenhagen: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived at the climate talks December 17, and debate continued over how much 'transparency' countries are willing to accept.