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. Humans

    High court gives EPA a partial victory

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency can implement tougher controls on tiny airborne particulates that can get deep inside people's lungs.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Stress-prone? Altering the diet may help

    Some people undertake seemingly impossible tasks without frustration, while others become anxious or depressed. A Dutch study now finds that the latter individuals might cope with pressure better if they tailored their diet to fuel the brain with more tryptophan. The brain uses this essential amino acid, a building block of many proteins, to fashion […]

  3. Health & Medicine

    The Good Trans Fat

    One arcane family of fats may be tapped to treat or prevent a host of diseases.

  4. Ecosystems

    Fish Epidemic Traces to Novel Germ

    A new mycobacterium, related to the one causing tuberculosis, is responsible for a mysterious epidemic sickening some of the Chesapeake Bay's most prized fish.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Fighting cancer from the cabbage patch

    Sauerkraut a health food? Not yet. But midwestern scientists have found evidence that something in this pickled cabbage and related foods blocks the action of estrogen, a hormone that can fuel the growth of breast cancer and other reproductive-tract malignancies. Nutritionist William G. Helferich of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his colleagues were […]

  6. Health & Medicine

    Sometimes an antibiotic is much more

    By reining in destructive enzymes in the body, tetracyclines can thwart various diseases, including periodontal bone loss and cancer.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Calcium supplements for chocolate

    Using soap chemistry, scientists prevented some of chocolate's saturated fat--and calories--from being absorbed.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Can childhood diets lead to diabetes?

    Prolonged consumption of foods that break down quickly into simple sugars appears to foster obesity and vulnerability to diabetes, an animal study shows.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Path to heart health is one with a peel

    Citrus fruits may deserve a more prominent role in the diet. A research team in Canada has just shown that drinking several glasses of orange juice daily can pump up blood concentrations of the so-called good cholesterol. Boosting this high-density-lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol can slow the buildup of artery-clogging plaque (SN: 9/9/89, p. 171). In their […]

  10. Chemistry

    New solution for kitchen germs

    Cooking will kill almost any microbe. But when it comes to serving raw foods, such as the vegetables in a garden salad, neutralizing germs with heat is not an option and washing the greens doesn’t reliably disinfect. Although raw produce can be sanitized in a bath of dilute bleach, a team of Georgia scientists is […]

  11. Earth

    Electricity-leaking office equipment

    Nearly 2 percent of U.S. electricity each year goes to power office equipment that had ostensibly been turned off.

  12. Earth

    Contaminants still lace some meats

    Tainted ingredients of livestock feed can contribute to worrisome residues of organochlorines, such as PCBs, ending up in meat.