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The state Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board is expected Thursday to review a request by AIDS health care advocates that adult-film workers be required to wear condoms and engage in other safe-sex practices.
Los Angeles County health officials last month opted not to require condoms on adult-film sets, arguing that the regulations would be nearly impossible to enforce. Most of the nation's porn industry is based in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley.
Robyn Beck, AFP / Getty Images
On Thursday, California's Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board plans to review a proposal to require adult-film workers in the state to wear condoms. Here, actors prepare to film a scene on an adult-film set in Canoga Park, Calif.
"It is very, very difficult to implement. There are roughly 200 production companies with about ... 1,200 actors," Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county's public health chief, told the Los Angeles Times in February. "All you need is a room and a camera and a bed, basically, to do this kind of shoot, and we have no ability to police this."
But the state board, which oversees working conditions, could do what Los Angeles County decided was too hard to enforce.
Staffers recommended the state board consider new regulations, backing a petition by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation that said "there is an epidemic of sexually transmitted disease in the industry and the industry refuses to protect its workers from exposure to potentially infectious materials, such as blood and semen, by requiring the use of condoms and implementing other control measures."
In its petition, the AIDS group cited statistics that fewer than one in five actors in the hard-core heterosexual porn industry use condoms and said there is "an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases among workers in the adult-film industry."
The board's staff recommended that an advisory committee be formed to get broader reaction -- including from the porn industry -- to the proposed requirement. The board could create the advisory committee when it meets Thursday.
Staffers recommended the state board consider new regulations, backing a petition by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation that said "there is an epidemic of sexually transmitted disease in the industry and the industry refuses to protect its workers from exposure to potentially infectious materials, such as blood and semen, by requiring the use of condoms and implementing other control measures."
In its petition, the AIDS group cited statistics that fewer than one in five actors in the hard-core heterosexual porn industry use condoms and said there is "an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases among workers in the adult-film industry."
The board's staff recommended that an advisory committee be formed to get broader reaction -- including from the porn industry -- to the proposed requirement. The board could create the advisory committee when it meets Thursday.
