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. 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.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Calcium supplements for chocolate

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

  3. 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.

  4. 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 […]

  5. 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 […]

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.