A commonly cited quote by Ralph Nader states that a pound of plutonium dust spread into the atmosphere would be enough to kill 8 billion people.[132] However, calculations show that one pound of plutonium could kill no more than 2 million people by inhalation. This makes the toxicity of plutonium roughly equivalent with that of nerve gas.[133] Nader's views were challenged in 1976 by Bernard Cohen, as described in the book Nuclear Power, Both Sides: The Best Arguments for and Against the Most Controversial Technology. Cohen's own estimate is that a dose of 200 micrograms would likely be necessary to cause cancer.[134]Not as toxic as I thought.
You’d need more than 90 million tons distributed evenly to raise the level to the LD50 in just the first 1 foot of atmosphere over the ground. A bit problematic given less than ~100 tons has ever been produced.
Not as toxic as I thought.
So 1 gram of the stuff would be enough to cause cancer in 5,000 persons. (I'm guessing that this assumes that all of the Plutonium is delivered into human bodies, i.e., that none of it is otherwise dispersed into the environment.
Regards,
Cohen, who was a health physicist, made the point that the two million fatal doses per pound applied to plutonium as an aspirate. And the entire dose has to be aspirated. Dispensed as an airborne cloud it would quickly settle and only a very small fraction would ever be inhaled by human beings.
Ingested, plutonium is no more toxic than caffeine. Cohen publicly offered to ingest the same amount of plutonium as Nadar would caffeine.
Cohen makes the point that if plutonium were simply washed down the sink, only about 0.01% would ever be ingested, mostly harmlessly. No one is proposing careless disposal of plutonium, merely that the hysteria over plutonium is not founded on facts. When facts contend with hysteria, hysteria wins.