At the intersection of medical and nuclear racism lies the cobalt-60 cancer-therapy unit. This machine uses radiation emitted by a highly radioactive isotope of cobalt to kill cancer cells and eradicate tumors. Along with saving lives, however, this machine and the cobalt-60 sources it uses put many at risk.

In my research, I examine how systems of racial and economic power characterize the lifetime of these units in the Americas. While US and Canada-based industries benefit in production and manufacturing industries, risk is concentrated in cobalt mines. While wealthier, North American, hospitals can afford safeguards for these units, poorer Latin American hospitals cannot, and accidents are more likely and more severe in these spaces.

After the unit cannot be used any longer in a hospital setting, sources and units often become stranded in countries with the least means to properly secure them. A different class of accidents happens then, when scavengers find these units to try to sell them in scrapyards, often unaware of the dangers. Thousands of people have been exposed to radiation because of unsecure storage of these machines after their clinical use. Large-scale accidents like these are far less likely in the US because we have infrastructure equipped to catch them before they reach the scale often seen in Latin America.

The historical and current inequities of this technology concentrate risk in communities with less economic and racial power. My research examines that system, which has not before been described, that perpetuates this unequal distribution of radiological risk.