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 Maize-ing Travels

    Corn, an American native, has taken root the world over and is becoming increasingly important to agriculture in nations beyond the West.

  2. Ecosystems

    More on California’s rogue seaweed

    Scientists have obtained genetic confirmation of the assumption that a newfound rogue alga in California waters is the same strain that has been smothering seafloor communities in the Mediterranean.

  3. Earth

    Sprawl’s aquatic pollution

    A new study links the traffic associated with urban sprawl to an unexpectedly large rain of air pollutants entering local waters.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Path to heart health is one with a peel

    Consuming lots of oranges and other citrus fruits, or their juices, can trigger beneficial, cholesterol-moderating changes in the blood.

  5. Humans

    Of Rats, Mice, and Birds

    Fireworks erupt over an extension of rules to protect lab animals.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Vitamin E targets dangerous inflammation

    Megadoses of vitamin E may reduce the risk of heart disease in people with diabetes and other conditions that produce chronic, low-grade inflammation.

  7. Agriculture

    Coming Soon—Spud Lite

    A new variety of baking potato has about 25 percent fewer calories and 30 percent fewer carbohydrates per unit weight than the typical brown-skinned Idaho potato.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Tea and a Daughter’s Puberty

    The age at which a girl first starts her monthly menstrual periods is later among daughters of tea drinkers than among daughters of moms who typically choose coffee or another beverage.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Green tea takes on poison

    Green tea contains a broad range of compounds that detoxify dioxin.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Americans eat faster, and more

    More and more people are eating at fast-food restaurants, and they down significantly more calories on the days they do.

  11. Earth

    Limiting Dead Zones

    To limit algal blooms and the development of fishless dead zones in coastal waters, farmers and other sources of nitrate are investigating novel strategies to control nitrate runoff.

  12. Earth

    Dead Waters

    Coastal dead zones—underwater regions where oxygen concentrations are too low for fish to survive—are mushrooming globally, threatening to transform entire ecosystems.