Never mind the radiation, plutonium is toxic just for being a heavy metal. Contact with skin is deadly.
No need to whip up mindless hysteria, leave that to the Democrats...
CDC Fact Sheet: Plutonium has not been shown to cause adverse health effects in people. Animal studies have shown lung diseases from short-term exposure to high concentrations of plutonium. Animal studies have also shown effects on the blood, liver, bone, and immune system from plutonium exposure.
Mercury is more of a heavy-metal toxin than plutonium, and yet I'm still here after rolling little balls of mercury around on my palm when I was a kid.
I once read a science fiction story -- in Asimov's magazine -- about terrorists attempting to make a dirty bomb. There are many problems. If you just use big chunks, you get big chunks that are east to find and dispose of. To get an effective weapon you have to grind it into powder, an activity not endorsed by OSHA. It is more hazardous to the terrorists than to their intended victims.
And that is why any attempt to manufacture an effective dirty bomb can be traced. The equipment needed is not available at your neighborhood machine shop.
Saddam's role model held a plutonium pit in his hands:
By late 1947, Igor Kurchatov, who directed scientific work on the bomb, was so sure that the Russian scientists finally had the technical skills to build the weapon that he took the nuclear charge of the first proposed Soviet atomic bomb - a nickel-plated plutonium ball about ten centimetres in diameter - to Stalin in his study at the Kremlin.Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky also reported this story in his book KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev.'And how do we know that this is plutonium, not a sparkling piece of iron?' Stalin asked. 'And why this glitter? Why this window dressing?'
'The charge has been nickel-plated so that it would be safe to touch,' Kurchatov replied. 'Plutonium is very toxic, but nickel-plated it's safe.'
Stalin handled it. He noticed its heat.
'Is it always warm?' he asked. 'It always is,' Kurchatov replied. 'The continuous nuclear reaction of alpha-disintegration is underway inside. It warms up. But we shall excite a powerful fission reaction in it. This will be an explosion of great power.' Stalin was not completely convinced but he later authorized the testing of the first bomb. It was to take until September 1949.