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

    USDA proposes an office of science

    The Bush administration's proposed 2007 farm bill would merge two existing U.S. Department of Agriculture research agencies into a single office of science.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Don’t Push Babies’ Growth

    Overfeeding low-birthweight infants risks programming them for high blood pressure later in life.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Many babies born short of vitamin D

    Even in the womb, babies face a high risk of vitamin D deficiency.

  4. Agriculture

    Ethanol Juggernaut Diverts Corn from Food to Fuel

    Corn feeds the production of meat and dairy goods in the United States, so those products are likely to increase in price as ethanol fuel demands more of the country's corn supply.

  5. Earth

    Gas tanks could guzzle half of U.S. corn yields

    Strong expansion of the U.S. corn-to-ethanol industry, now under way, stands poised to divert much of the grain from food uses to transportation fuel.

  6. Earth

    Heating releases cookware chemicals

    Nonstick coatings on fry pans and microwave-popcorn bags can, when heated, release traces of potentially toxic perfluorinated chemicals.

  7. Earth

    Aquatic Non-Scents

    Many common pollutants appear to be jeopardizing the survival of fish and other aquatic species by blunting their sense of smell.

  8. Earth

    Counterintuitive Toxicity

    Toxicologists risk missing important health effects, both good and bad, if they don't begin regularly probing the impacts of very low doses of poisons.

  9. Ecosystems

    Alien Alert: Shrimpy invader raises big concerns

    A shrimplike European invader just discovered in the Great Lakes could prove ecologically disruptive to populations of native lake animals.

  10. Humans

    Congress upgrades fisheries protection

    Congress has reauthorized and strengthened a 30-year-old federal law governing fishing and ocean management.

  11. Agriculture

    Big footprints

    Livestock production carries surprisingly high, and largely hidden, environmental costs.

  12. Earth

    Yes, it’s asbestos

    Federal mineralogists have corroborated earlier evidence that Sierra-foothills communities around Sacramento, Calif., are built atop soils naturally laced with asbestos.