Following a meeting of a California Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA) advisory panel on the issue of whether the state should enforce the usage of condoms in the San Fernando Valley-based porn industry, the Aids Healthcare Foundation says Cal-OSHA official indicated the law probably covers such a mandate.

Cal/OSHA official Deborah Gold is quoted as telling the 100 or so people at the downtown meeting Tuesday, “Let me be clear: We're not creating a new rule, we're talking about modifying an existing rule.”

It's an endorsement the foundation has been waiting to hear for quite a while. The AHF has argued all along that the state already regulates blood-borne pathogens in the workplace, and that all it needs to do is enforce rules already on the books when it comes to the adult video industry. In other words, the foundation says condoms should be the law in adult video.

The industry has argued that it has a self-regulating system that has worked: Actors are tested regularly and have to present test fresh test results at shoots. Industry leaders have said that the market won't go for condom-on porn, and that film shoots will go underground, where no such testing system exists.

However, Robert Kim-Farley, director of the county's Communicable Disease Control and Prevention program, said eight of as many as 22 possible HIV infections in the industry between 2004 and 2008 were likely contracted on-set.

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