They were some of the Cold War’s first warriors. Now they say they are among its last casualties, coping with cancers that may be linked to their work in Buffalo-area factories that made components for nuclear weapons half a century ago.

It took decades for the federal government to acknowledge that it exposed thousands of workers around the country to dangerous levels of radiation in factories handling nuclear materials, starting with the Manhattan Project in the 1940s and continuing, in some cases, into the 1970s.