Yeah, that struck me too. My dad did his doctorate on cadmium; his jobs included things like cancer research and solar cells. There're a lot of uses for heavy metal radioisotopes. Like anything else, they're tools - they can be used for either good, evil, or indifference, depending upon who's using them.

I certainly wouldn't give it to a child to play with, but the overall tone of this article seemed very much like plain old scaremongering. I'd believe it more if they'd used a more neutral, scientific tone. It'd also help had I not checked on their "CDC list of 275 most hazardous chemicals" - the only Google result that wasn't a reprint of the article was this:

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxpro2.html

There are 275 toxicological profiles, but they are not ordered; I can't find anywhere where cadmium is #7.