When Cecil Keen moved into his Mankato home, he did a radon test in the basement.

“It was off the charts,” said Keen, a professor in the geography department at Minnesota State University.

Keen hired a contractor for $1,500 to mitigate the problem by installing a pipe and fan system to vent the deadly gas from under the basement slab out through the roof.

That experience and ongoing MSU research showing a majority of Mankato homes with high radon levels led Keen and others to successfully push for a state law that requires all new homes to be built with radon mitigation.

The new regulations go into effect June 1.

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