Despite the widespread fear engendered by an NBC news report which aired last night, reports that inspectors from the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal-OSHA) will attend every local porn shoot and require the universal use of condoms, dental dams and gloves have no basis in fact.
"First of all, the report that's been cited is from the Los Angeles County Health Department," said one industry attorney who would not speak for attribution. "As far as I know, Cal-OSHA, the state agency, has not taken a position on any health issues regarding the adult industry except its usual one of encouraging safe-sex practices.
"Moreover, Cal-OSHA typically reacts to a situation like this only after a complaint has been made; it doesn't go nosing around looking for such complaints," the attorney continued.
So far, Cal-OSHA has issued just two citations for alleged health code violations, to production companies Evasive Angles and TTB Productions. While those citations levied heavy fines, the current status of those citations is unknown, and there have been no reports of the fines being paid and/or any pleas entered. And though there have been rumors of other complaints having been filed with Cal-OSHA, there have been no reports of further citations having been issued.
Dr. Sharon Mitchell, founder of AIM Healthcare Foundation, which performs the vast majority of the sexually-transmitted infection (STI) testing in the adult industry, has so far been unable to obtain an advance copy of the LA County study, which will be published online Friday in the Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report. However, Mitchell, whose only knowledge of the report's contents has been the NBC news story, hopes that the actual language of the report will not be as damaging as the news reports have implied, especially since, in the nine years that AIM has been in existence, there have been a total of 17 HIV cases discovered in the adult industry, including the Marc Wallice incident which led to AIM's founding.
Since since that time, the only (hetero) HIV-positive performers who have actually done sex scenes are Darren James and the four women he is alleged to have infected, while the others were potential performers whose HIV status was discovered through AIM's screening procedures before performing.
"In 2004, there were about 2000 new reported cases of HIV infection in Los Angeles County," Mitchell noted. "The adult industry accounted for four of them. That's two-tenths of one percent, and zero for the seven years before that."
Because of the industry's excellent record on HIV, Mitchell, who stresses that she has not yet read the County's report, suspects that the Department of Health Services may be overreacting to the adult industry's situation.
