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. Agriculture

    A Mushrooming Advance

    Human skin isn't the only thing that makes vitamin D upon exposure to the ultraviolet radiation.

  2. Chemistry

    From Aerators to Rust — New Lead Risks

    Rusty water and other unusual sources of toxic risks in home drinking water.

  3. Chemistry

    Faucets Destined for Brassy Changes

    Although new standards poised to take effect in a few years will reduce the lead-leaching risk from drinking water faucets, showerheads and many other water dispensers around will remain unregulated.

  4. Tech

    Lead-free? Faucets are anything but

    Featured blog: Users of brand-new buildings on a major university campus were surprised to discover high concentrations of lead in the water. Faucets were the culprit.

  5. Chemistry

    Holey Copper Pipes!

    Engineers are homing in on germs and other surprises behind the development of tiny holes in home water pipes.

  6. Animals

    Farm chemicals can indirectly hammer frogs

    A widely used agricultural weed killer teams up with fertilizer to render frogs especially vulnerable to debilitating parasites.

  7. Health & Medicine

    About McCain’s Melanoma

    The Republican presidential hopeful faces a small but lingering risk of cancer recurrence.

  8. Earth

    The Case for Very Hot Water

    Turning down the thermostat on a home's water heater could foster the growth of toxic bacteria in home plumbing.

  9. Earth

    Big Water Losses

    America's ailing water-delivery infrastructure is literally throwing clean water away -- and dirtying some of what it moves toward our taps.

  10. Tech

    Coal Country’s New Foresters

    New techniques may be shaving a century or two off the recovery of mined mountain tops.

  11. Tech

    Trading Forests for Coal

    Forested mountain peaks have been giving way to grassy planes in Appalachian coal country.

  12. Archaeology

    Really Cool History

    Tales of the black band: Clues to a 4,200-year-old mystery lie frozen in icy records stored atop Mt. Kilimanjaro.