It's literally only dangerous if you eat it or breath it. A bubble head charm and enough self control not to eat anything that looks tasty and transfiguration reversion is no danger.
Counterpoint: sulfuric acid to bathwater. You've been soaking in the tub for half an hour when the transfiguration wears off.
Hmm, good point, there are other potential dangers. They are of the type that are pretty much only dangerous if you don't know about them. So if your enemy spikes your water supply, you would be in trouble, but that's not an unintended danger.
A few not particularly relevant concerns. Transfiguration is dangerous in MOR, But the type of danger McGonagall discusses is basically the same as any toxin. It's literally only dangerous if you eat it or breath it. A bubble head charm and enough self control not to eat anything that looks tasty and transfiguration reversion is no danger. So why is Mcgonagall so surprised that Dumbledoor used transfiguration in battle, and is still alive?
That being said, I think transfiguration is second only to time-travel in magics that are dangerous in the hands of creative people. For instance, what about transfiguring antimatter? There's no way Harry didn't think of that. I thought of that when I was near his age and reading canon. Obviously this is incredibly dangerous, but if he wants to level Azkaban, that's the easiest option. There's plenty of other fun things. For instance he could make an ionizing radiation death ray with a chunk of low half life material eg sodium-24 in a lead chamber with a small exit. Set it up as near Malfoy manor as possible and wait a little.
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My guess would be that the danger comes from the battle as much as from the transfiguration. Transfiguration seems to take time and concentration, far moreso than the charms and curses that seem to be the mainstays of battle magic, so odds are it's not generally used in active combat for the same reason that you don't generally dig a foxhole in the middle of a firefight. In support of this, Dragon and Chaos Armies, and SPHEW, have all used Transfiguration onscreen during battles -- but not, to the best of my recollection, in battle.
Combat stress might also tend to disrupt concentration in ways which are dangerous, but that's more speculative.
This is plausible - and the best explanation I've heard. McGonagall was thinking about this in the context of (and in comparison to) laboratory transfiguration dangers, where it's just your own transfiguration that's a danger. Also given the transfiguration speed of an adult wizard, I'm not sure that transfiguration ought to be that difficult in battle - though I agree it's more difficult than charms.