Not saying you're wrong, or even that my memory is right, but the Prof. said he lost friends during the Manhattan project to Plutonium, and not because of the radiation.
I don’t doubt that the lesson (to machine Plutonium only while water was flowing over it) was learned at the price of many lives.
Dust, if breathed in, is very toxic. A team was operating an atomic pile, when it got away from them. After they got it shut down, the chief ordered everyone to stay at their work station. He drew a circle around his feet, and signed it with a piece of chalk in his lab coat. He walked over to each physicist, and had them do the same. All of them died of radiation (IIRC) and from their distance from the pile, they their doses were calculated, and correlate with how long it took them to die.
One early reactor got away, and the rescue crew found all the bodies but one. Eventually they found the last one. One worker had removed a control rod too far, the reactor moderator boiled, and the last man was found pinned by the control rod to the ceiling, pinned through his chest by the control rod he was adjusting. After that control rods were controlled by a worm gear for positive control over the position.
Below please find a link to the material data safety sheet for plutonium. Note the difference between ingestion and inhalation hazards.
http://www.chemexper.net/specification_d/chemicals/supplier/cas/Plutonium.asp