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

    California acts on plastic additive

    Korean engineers have developed a replacement for a plasticizer used in polyvinyl chloride that California has just ruled is a known reproductive toxicant.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Balance benefits from noisy insoles

    Sending subliminal vibrations to nerves on the bottoms of feet helps people, especially the elderly, keep their balance.

  3. Earth

    Flame retardants take a vacation

    The lifetime in blood of flame- retarding diphenyl ethers, now-ubiquitous pollutants, ranges from 2 weeks to 2 years, Swedish researchers find.

  4. Earth

    New PCBs?

    New studies have begun linking toxic risks with a ubiquitous family of flame retardants.

  5. Health & Medicine

    As If You Needed Another Reason to Eat Strawberries (with recipe)

    Whether draped atop shortcake, cooked with rhubarb and slathered over vanilla ice cream, or downed in the garden just after picking, strawberries are one of summer’s delights. Now, scientists at Cornell University find that this fragile fruit not only tastes great and contains vitamins but also may offer surprisingly potent benefits in the body’s fight […]

  6. Health & Medicine

    Do Arctic diets protect prostates?

    Marine diets appear to explain why the incidence of prostate cancer among Inuit men is lower than that of males anywhere else in the world.

  7. Tech

    Wash Those Hands!

    A Florida-based company is now developing a laser-based scanning technology to scout for dirty hands. Installed in restaurant washrooms or daycare centers, it could identify fecal traces — evidence that hand washing was incomplete. Indeed, these sensors might even be coupled to a lock that allows workers back into a kitchen after a restroom break, notes Richard Stroman, vice president of eMerge Interactive, which is applying for a patent on the system. Kitchen or food-processing-plant workers who don't pass the laser test would be forced to go back and lather up again.

  8. Agriculture

    Calling All Cows

    Last May, tissues from the carcass of a North American cow turned up positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy–the ailment responsible for mad cow disease. Within hours, the Canadian government traced the animal to the Alberta farm where it had been raised for its 8 years of life. In short order, other members of its herd […]

  9. Health & Medicine

    The Risks in Sweet Solutions to Young Thirsts

    Babies seem to be born with a sweet tooth–one that many adults retain. However, parents and caregivers who indulge a child’s appetite for sugary drinks may be fostering cavities in their children’s teeth, a new study finds. Sugary beverages, especially soda pop, caused more cavities than juice or juice-containing drinks did. That idea may seem […]

  10. Health & Medicine

    To Your Health?

    Doctors are divided on whether the value of screening the torso with X-rays to find symptomless disease outweighs the costs.

  11. Chemistry

    Germ-killing plastic wrap

    Scientists have developed biodegradable plastics that release natural germ-killing agents onto the foods wrapped inside.

  12. Chemistry

    Toxic runoff from plastic mulch

    Pesticide runoff from tomato fields covered with sheets of plastic can kill fish, clams, and other aquatic life.