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. Environment

    E-cigarettes may inflame lungs as much as cigarettes do

    Acute lung impacts of e-cigarettes and tobacco cigarettes are nearly identical, new study finds.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Health risks of e-cigarettes emerge

    Research uncovers a growing list of chemicals that end up in an e-cigarette user’s lungs, and one study finds that an e-cigarette’s vapors can increase the virulence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

  3. Cosmology

    From Dust to Life

    In about 300 pages, this book sums up the history of all that matters — or at least everything made of matter — from the Big Bang to life on Earth.

  4. Science & Society

    Tim Samaras, 1957–2013

    Tim Samaras spent the past twenty years chasing tornados. He was killed in a storm in May.

  5. Math

    Math on Trial

    How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom by Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez.

  6. Tech

    Obama worried about research funding

    Barack Obama offered yet another argument about why the current federal-budget stalemate is so risky: “[T]he sequester, as it’s known in Washington-speak — it’s hitting our scientific research.” As things now stand, “we could lose a year, two years of scientific research as a practical matter, because of misguided priorities here in this town.”

  7. Physics

    As Erebus Lives and Breathes

    The Antarctica volcano’s long-lived lava lake coughs up clues to the physiology of volcanoes .

  8. Earth

    Intensive care linked to BPA exposure in newborns

    High levels of pollutant BPA occur in sickest babies, study finds.

  9. Earth

    Blood levels of BPA become source of controversy

    New data question whether human blood measurements of BPA reflect sample contamination or just exaggerated exposures.

  10. Earth

    Aquatic predators affect carbon-storing plant life

    Freshwater predator species can prevent the overgrazing of plants that suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

  11. Oceans

    Life found deep below Antarctic ice

    Lake buried under 800 meters of ice hosts cells, researchers find.

  12. Humans

    U.S. team breaks through subglacial lake

    Testing should continue for a day or more, probing for life in the Antarctic depths.