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

    How polluted is a preschooler’s world?

    Preliminary data from a new study show that children may ingest traces of atrazine, a common herbicide, in their drinking water.

  2. Earth

    Kitchen tap may offer drugs and more

    Excreted drugs and household chemicals are making their way through community waste-treatment and drinking-water plants.

  3. Earth

    Composting cuts manure’s toxic legacy

    Composting manure reduces its testosterone and estrogen concentrations, limiting the runoff of these hormones, which can harm wildlife.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Brain Food

    New food labeling will identify foods rich in choline, a nutrient that plays an integral role in learning and brain health.

  5. Health & Medicine

    AMA: Drugs are for anthrax, not fear

    Doctors should not use antibiotics prophylactically against anthrax unless there is good reason to believe the individual had encountered the germs directly, the American Medical Association advises.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Retail meats host drug-resistant bacteria

    Three studies appear to tie livestock growth promoters to risk of serious human disease.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Mushrooming Concerns

    For chefs who savor the flavor of fresh, organic ingredients, what could be better than cooking just-picked mushrooms for dinner? Tricholoma flavovirens–sometimes known in the United States and elsewhere as Tricholoma equestre. Its common name: Man on Horseback. Fred Steven That attitude appears to have gotten a few French gourmands in trouble–big trouble, according to […]

  8. Earth

    Ill Winds

    Research suggests that the long-range movement of dust can sicken wildlife, crops—even humans—a continent away.

  9. Earth

    Rain of foreign dust fuels red tides

    Soil particles from Africa, raining out from clouds over the Americas, may trigger the first steps that lead to toxic red-tide algal blooms off Florida.

  10. Earth

    EU moves against flame retardants

    The European Union has provisionally voted to ban the use and importation of nearly all members of a family of flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers.

  11. Earth

    Where’s the smoke from the N.Y. fires?

    Analyses of smoke from the destroyed World Trade Center towers indicated little risk that the fires would cause significant health effects for cleanup crews and city residents.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Germs can survive weeks on fabrics, plastic

    Soft, dry surfaces in hospitals can harbor live germs for more than a month.