LOS ANGELES (AP) – An HIV outbreak in the pornography industry has prompted a request for the state to regulate movie sets and perhaps require condoms – a move that some say would force the multibillion-dollar business underground or out of state.

A week after two actors tested positive for the AIDS virus, county health officials said that they have declared a health emergency and will ask the state’s Division of Occupational Health and Safety to investigate workplace conditions.

“This is an industry that’s been largely ignored. We don’t really know how many people have been exposed and infected in the course of their employment,” said Peter Kerndt, director of the sexually transmitted disease program for the county Department of Health Services.

Susan Guard, a Cal-OSHA spokeswoman, said the agency first must determine whether porn performers qualify as employees of the production companies. Cal-OSHA cannot regulate independent contractors.

However, even if they are independent, “you don’t give away your rights to a safe work environment just because you’re a contractor,” Kerndt said.

California’s worker safety laws don’t specifically cover the adult movie industry, but Cal-OSHA may have jurisdiction under regulations requiring employers to have a written injury and illness prevention plan and to provide protections for workers exposed to disease-infected blood or other fluids.

Cal-OSHA would like the industry to adopt a model plan for disease prevention, although specifics are unclear, Guard said.

Kerndt said he believed it would involve requiring condoms for all sex scenes as well as paying for actors’ HIV testing, vaccinations for other sexually transmitted diseases and treatment.

Requiring condoms for all work would be overkill, argued Kat Sunlove, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry.

“Do we really want condom police?” she asked. “They are overreacting to a very sad situation.”

About 200 movie producers, most of them located in the San Fernando Valley, produce thousands of adult movies a year for an industry valued at $4 billion to $13 billion. Many involve unprotected sex because, insiders say, on-screen condom use spoils the fantasy for viewers and results in lower sales.

The industry argues that it does a good job of self-regulation. Performers must come up clean on a monthly blood test to work. More than a dozen would-be actors have been rejected by major companies because they failed tests. The last HIV scare, in 1999, involved a single actor.

Health officials have worked with the industry to promote the self-policing system but in this case it failed, Kerndt said.

Darren James slept with 13 actresses before his latest blood test showed he was HIV-positive. One actress, Lara Roxx, also has tested HIV positive. More than 60 performers who had contact with them have been barred by the industry from working until their next blood tests are completed, and at least 30 production companies have halted production indefinitely.

James apparently contracted the disease last March while making a movie in Brazil, said Sharon Mitchell, executive director of the nonprofit Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation.

James could not be reached for comment. The industry news magazine AVN reported that he was “laying low” in San Diego.

Roxx, 22, told AVN that she is broke and has been staying with friends in Los Angeles. Her test results following her March 24 movie shoot with James “totally freaked me out,” she said.

“It isn’t a safe business, and I thought it was... I thought porn people were the cleanest people in the world,” she said.

Some observers said regulation might turn the once-forbidden industry back into the shadows or even out of state.

“Probably the reality is they would go underground, which just raises the risk” of disease, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.