BUT...from the same article:
The public health impact of the illicit dispersal of plutonium into the atmosphere would depend strongly on the circumstances and mechanisms of dispersal. People very near the dispersal site could experience serious acute health effects or significant increased cancer risks, but it is inconceivable that large numbers of people would suffer grave health effects, as implied by the news media. In particular, only someone quite near the source would have a significant risk of being exposed to an acutely lethal amount of plutonium, and that person would as likely be injured by the explosion or fire that dispersed the plutonium.
Likewise. And also this is from the article on the air dispersion of plutonium.
It should be pointed out that our simple estimate of 960 additional cancer deaths is pessimistic to the point of not being credible. Certainly the amount of plutonium inhaled would be greatly reduced by evacuation (or at least a retreat indoors) if a cloud of plutonium particles persisted over a city for many hours. Even a light breeze (5 km/hr) would carry the cloud beyond a city the size of Munich (20 km x 20 km) in a few hours. In any case, it is unbelievable that the total population, 4300 people per square kilometer, under the cloud would be outside breathing contaminated air for almost four days. As stated above, a light breeze would carry the contamination beyond a city in a few hours. Thus a better estimate of the exposure time might be made by assuming that the diurnal variation causes such a breeze and the cloud remains over the city for only 12 hours. In this case the amount of plutonium inhaled would be about 10 milligrams, leading to the still pessimistic expectation of about 120 additional deaths due to cancer. As a matter of fact, it is unlikely that the dispersion of 200 grams of plutonium would result in any observable increase in the number of expected deaths (860) due to cancer.