California workplace safety officials have fined Larry Flynt's Hustler Video and another porn producer for not using condoms on set to protect sex performers from exposure to disease.
Hustler faces 14,175 dollars in fines for three violations, including failure to provide condoms or other protective equipment, according to a Division of Occupational Safety and Health citation.
Hustler "failed to ensure the use of appropriate personal protective equipment, such as condoms" to protect its employees from excretions and blood in the course of producing adult videos, according to the citation.
The fines are based on the same section of state law that also requires hospitals to provide nurses with protective gear to spare them exposure to blood-borne and fluid-borne illnesses.
Flynt has said in the past that audiences do not want to watch porn in which actors use condoms.
Hustler was also fined for failing to maintain written injury and illness policies and for failing to provide workers with vaccines for hepatitis C.
Hustler's citation stems from a September 14 inspection of a jobs site in response to a complaint from the Aids Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles-based non-profit group that advocates safe sex in pornography.
Forsaken Pictures faces 12,150 dollars in fines for similar violations. The fines were issued on March 9.
Safety official Deborah Gold said the state continually investigates the porn industry, though job sites can be difficult to find, and has cited a handful of producers for violations in recent years.
"Clearly if an employee is having unprotected sexual contact with another person then there needs to be either engineering control, like simulation, or people need to use a condom or other barrier," she said.
Late last year, a porn actor tested positive for HIV at a California clinic, causing panic among actors. Some San Fernando Valley pornographers in the multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry shuttered productions as a precaution.