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. Ecosystems

    Bad-News Beauties

    Discarded aquarium fish are the likely source of an alien species that's breeding in the Atlantic and could threaten economically important U.S. fisheries.

  2. Earth

    Plastics agent worsens skin allergies

    Low doses of one of the most commonly used softeners in plastics can aggravate dust-mite allergy.

  3. Earth

    Are pollutants shrinking polar bear gonads?

    New research links persistent pollutants with reproductive impairment in polar bears.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Another Way Men and Women Differ

    One reason young women face a much lower heart-disease risk than do men may reflect the different way their bodies respond to fats circulating in their blood during the first hours after a meal.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Breast milk may not be enough

    Breast-fed infants need vitamin D supplements, at least in winter.

  6. Earth

    Rogue alga routed

    An invasive-species action team has eradicated one of the world's worst weeds, a marine alga, from a California lagoon, its only known foothold in North America.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer Growth (with recipe)

    Compounds in pomegranate juice show promise in curbing the growth of prostate cancer.

  8. Earth

    Macho Moms: Perchlorate pollutant masculinizes fish

    Perchlorate, a compound best known as a component of rocket fuel, can disrupt sexual development in fish.

  9. Poor sleep can accompany schizophrenia

    The biological clocks in people with schizophrenia often are disturbed, if not broken.

  10. Virtual reality for earthquake fears

    Using virtual reality technology to train children on how to cope with an earthquake helped reduce panic and evacuation performance during a later, real quake.

  11. Tech

    Tapping out a TAI-CHI tune

    A new system permits people to make a keyboard and more out of a tabletop or any other hard surface.

  12. Social jet lag: Need a smoke?

    People who persistently fight their biological clocks by rising early or going to bed late are more likely to become smokers.