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

    Plastic debris picks up ocean toxics

    Some plastics can accumulate toxic pollutants from water, increasing the risk that they might poison wildlife mistaking these plastics for food.

  2. Earth

    Resuscitating the Gulf’s dead zone

    State, federal, and Indian agencies have joined forces to develop policies aimed at stemming a huge, seasonal zone in the Gulf of Mexico where oxygen levels are too low to sustain most aquatic life.

  3. Health & Medicine

    ‘Bug’ spray cuts risk of ear infection

    Spraying “good” bacteria into the nose reduced the incidence of ear infections in children especially prone to such infections.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Dietary stress may compromise bones

    Internal conflict about what and how much to eat not only induces production of a stress hormone but also may eventually weaken bones.

  5. Diesel gases masculinize fetal rodents

    In rats, exposure to diesel exhaust perturbs pregnant moms’ sex-hormone production and makes her pups more masculine in certain ways.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Do Meat and Dairy Harm Aging Bones?

    Two studies have contradictory findings about the impacts of animal protein on bones in elderly people.

  7. Earth

    Macho Waters

    Some river pollution spawns body-altering steroids.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Vision: The risks of being too fat or too tall

    Excess weight or height can have a blinding impact, fostering the development of cataracts.

  9. Earth

    Salmon puzzle: Why did males turn female?

    Most of the spawning female Chinook salmon in one part of the Columbia River appear to have started life as males.

  10. Earth

    New accord targets long-lived pollutants

    Negotiators drafted an agreement to ban or phase out some of the world's most persistent and toxic pollutants.

  11. Earth

    Lemon-scented products spawn pollutants

    Some fragrances used in home-care products can play a role in generating potentially harmful air pollution.

  12. 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.