from www.examiner.com – This morning in Universal City, CA, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the Pink Cross Foundation will announce plans to file complaints with the California Division of Occupational Safety & Health (Cal/OSHA) against 16 of the top adult film industry companies, as part of its campaign to persuade Cal/OSHA to enforce mandatory condom use on adult film sets in the Los Angeles-based adult entertainment industry.
The film companies to be named in the complaint include Anarchy Films, Backend Productions, Blue Pictures, Critical X, Hustler Video, Heatwave Entertainment, Immoral Productions, Latin Media, Legend, Mayhem, Maverick Entertainment, Raw Flesh, Sin City, Top Dog/Magnus Productions, Vivid Entertainment, and Club Jenna. 58 films from the 16 companies were considered in the AHF analysis.
In a statement yesterday, Michael Weinstein [pictured], President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, wrote:
As a global HIV and STD medical provider operating treatment clinics and prevention facilities here in California, we see it as our duty to pursue action on the issue of safety in the workplace—in these instances, unprotected sex acts taking place in albeit non-traditional workplaces—porn sets located throughout the San Fernando Valley that are churning out billions of dollars of adult fare every day. This is why we are filing workplace health and safety complaints with Cal/OSHA today: to press for the enforcement of state and local workplace regulatory guidelines which would require the use of condoms in all adult films produced in California.
Later in the same statement, AIDS Healthcare Foundation reports on some of the California Department of Health statistics that are motivating their push for mandatory condom use on adult film sets in California:
According to figures cited by DPH, there were 2,013 documented cases of Chlamydia among LA porn performers between 2003 and 2007. In the same period, 965 cases of gonorrhea were documented. Many performers suffer multiple infections. In the period April 2004 to March 2008 there have been 2,847 STD infections diagnosed among 1,884 performers in the hardcore industry in LA County. DPH attributes the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases in the porn industry to a lack of protective equipment for partners, including condoms. The agency recommends condoms be used during production, but has never taken steps to ensure their use, or to protect the performers who are essentially required to endanger their health in order to remain employed.
XBIZ.com, an adult industry news source, has more details about the new complaints and notes that today’s press conference and the announced Cal/OSHA complaints “are the latest high-stakes moves by AHF meant to encourage lawmakers into passing mandatory condom legislation in porn. The group sued Los Angeles County last month alleging that public health officials did nothing to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases after it was reported that a single performer contracted HIV from a person outside the industry.”
The adult entertainment industry has sought to limit the spread of disease and avoid mandatory condom legilsation through a series of self-imposed testing and quarantine practices.