In a unanimous vote Thursday, the six-member standards board of the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health decided to create an advisory panel to consider doing more to regulate the state's pornography industry, including requiring condom use and STD tests.
The vote came in response to a petition filed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Since 2004, when an HIV outbreak rocked the industry, AHF has been advocating for increased protections for porn performers. Its president, Michael Weinstein, called the board's decision a "big step forward."
The board should mandate condom use and require the industry to pay for performers' STD tests, testified Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, director of communicable disease control and prevention for the Los Angeles County Department of Health. As many as one-quarter of porn actors are diagnosed with an STD in any given year, he said, and rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia ar e seven times higher among adult-film performers than among the general population.
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