Division of Environmental Health
Professor and MPH Program Graduate Advisor
Associate Director For Student Affairs
Phone: (619) 594-1688
Office: HT 104
Email: jquintan@sdsu.edu
Download CV (pdf)
Education
- PhD, Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley (1990)
- MPH, Occupational and Environmental Health, San Diego State University (1985)
- BSc, Genetics, University of California, Davis (1983)
Scholarly Areas
- Biological Monitoring of Human Populations for Measurement of Exposure, Genetic Damage or Genetic Susceptibility,
- Exposure Assessment for Susceptible Populations, such as Children, Especially Through House Dust and Surfaces
- US-Mexico Border Environmental Justice issues, especially Traffic-related Air Pollution
Biography
Dr. Penelope J.E. Quintana is a Professor in the division of Environmental Health at the School of Public Health at San Diego State University. She has a research focus on exposures to children and vulnerable populations at the US-Mexico border. She has assessed children’s exposure to toxicants in house dust and on surfaces, especially residual tobacco toxicants remaining after smoking has taken place, known as thirdhand smoke. In conjunction with researchers at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Tijuana, she has studied markers of DNA damage in placentas from a Tijuana hospital, and exposure to toxic traffic pollutants inside vehicles and exposures to pedestrians waiting in lines to cross the US-Mexico border. She supports US-Mexico border community efforts to monitor their air through deployment of low-cost air sensors in the San Ysidro Air Monitoring Network and the Tijuana-based San Ysidro Port-Of-Entry Community Air Study. She is the author of a report drawing attention to the long northbound wait times and lines of idling vehicles at US-Mexico Ports of Entry as an environmental justice issue for border crossers and surrounding communities. She is a Scientific Guidance Panel member for the California Environmental Contaminant Biomonitoring Program. As a member of the Thirdhand Smoke Research Consortium, she also serves as a lead researcher with the Thirdhand Smoke Resource Center (www.thirdhandsmoke.org).
Publications
- For an up to date publications list see Google Scholar.
