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. Health & Medicine

    Honey, Let’s Shrink the Kids

    A new Institute of Medicine report calls for fundamental changes throughout U.S. society to make pediatric-obesity prevention a major national priority, comparable to the campaign against youthful smoking.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Fighting cholesterol with saturated fat?

    Marrying a saturated fat to the plant-derived ingredient in certain health-promoting margarines creates an especially potent cholesterol-lowering food additive.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Vitamin Boost

    Vitamin D is being linked to a host of health benefits that go well beyond stronger bones, extending to muscle preservation and some protection against cancer, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis.

  4. Health & Medicine

    A Guggul Prescription for Drug Interactions

    Herbal supplements made from myrrh compounds trigger biochemical reactions that can diminish the efficacy of many other prescription drugs an individual might be taking.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Coffee’s curious heart effects

    Very high or low daily consumption of coffee appears to pose far more of a heart risk than drinking moderately.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Omega-3’s May Hit Food Labels

    The Food and Drug Administration has announced that it will allow manufacturers to make certain health claims about omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in fish and other foods.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Should Foods Be Fortified Even More?

    Nutrition scientists argue that mandatory enrichment of cereal-grain-based foods with calcium and vitamin D would pay rich, needed health dividends.

  8. Agriculture

    The Ultimate Crop Insurance

    A new treaty renews hope that the waning diversity in agricultural crops can be slowed, and important genes preserved, both in the field and in gene banks.

  9. Health & Medicine

    We’re Very Supplemented

    Increasingly, men and women reach for pills to insure against the possibility they're not eating a healthy diet.

  10. Earth

    Infectious stowaways

    A new study finds that ballast water can move huge quantities of cholera germs and other microbes between ports around the globe.

  11. Earth

    Problems with eradicating polio

    The oral vaccine's live but attenuated virus may in rare cases revert to the disease-causing form, which can then turn up in natural waters even in regions now certified free of the wild-type virus.

  12. Health & Medicine

    What’s the Beef?

    Beef certified as Angus may not always be as tender as consumers expect.