Rate My Professor S. Katherine Hammond

S. Katherine Hammond is a Professor of the Graduate School and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also recognized as Professor Emeritus of Environmental Health Science and serves as core program faculty in the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. Holding a PhD and certification as a Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH), Hammond has focused her career on environmental health sciences within the Division of Environmental Health Sciences. Her research specializations include responses of asthmatic children to short-term fluctuations in particulate air pollution, neurologic and reproductive effects of hexane on workers, exposure and health effects of secondhand smoke along with international efforts for tobacco control, and evaluating exposure and health effects of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on asthmatic children and workers in China from the combustion of smoky coal. She teaches courses such as PH 220C: Health Risk Assessment, Regulation, and Policy, and PH 267B: Characterization of Airborne Chemicals.

Hammond's influential publications include Characterization of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in motor vehicle fuels and exhaust emissions (1999), Ambient air pollution impairs regulatory T-cell function in asthma (2010), Brief secondhand smoke exposure depresses endothelial progenitor cells activity and endothelial function (2008), Active smoking and secondhand smoke increase breast cancer risk: the report of the Canadian Expert Panel on Tobacco Smoke and Breast Cancer Risk (2011), A diffusion monitor to measure exposure to passive smoking (1987), and A randomized trial to reduce passive smoke exposure in low-income households with young children (2001). In 2009, she received support from the Chau Hoi Shuen Foundation Women in Science Program for collaborations with Chinese women scientists. Her work has been featured in media outlets, including The New York Times on smoke from controlled burns related to Covid-19 patients, and UC Berkeley Public Health articles on secondhand cannabis smoke dangers (2022) and air pollution reductions in the San Joaquin Valley (2020).