Industrial goggles could soon join inexpensive lingerie, white high heels and breast implants on the California film sets where the billion-dollar adult industry churns out blockbusters with titles such as Everyone I Did Last Summer, The Boobyguard and Good Will Humping.
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Legislation, which is heading to California's capital Sacramento, hopes to improve workplace safety drastically in the porn industry by more clearly enforcing existing legislation governing the use of condoms and introducing new rules governing exposure to OPIMs - that is, Other Potentially Infectious Materials.
That's where the goggles come in, but more on them in a moment.
The proposed California Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act would cover any production of pornographic material in the state of California - that is, "all workplaces in which employees have occupational exposure to blood-borne pathogens and/or sexually transmitted pathogens due to one or more employees engaging in sexual activity with another individual".
Those pathogens are more formally known as "Other Potentially Infectious Materials - Sexually Transmitted Infections", or OPIM-STIs, and include, but are by no means limited to, semen, vaginal secretions, faecal matter and - brace yourself - "all bodily fluids in situations where it is difficult or impossible to differentiate between bodily fluids".
The question of porn actors and actresses wearing goggles during sex scenes arises when it comes to potential OPIM-STI contact with the eyes.
In such situations, where OPIM-STI-to-eye contact could be "reasonably anticipated", the proposal says, "the employer shall provide, at no cost to the employee ... eye protection".
The proposals do not actually state that goggles are required, merely that an employer must provide adequate "eye protection".
Supporters of the measures, led by Michael Weinstein, the president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, say the legislation is necessary to protect the health of people working in adult films.
In addition to the "eye protection" rules, which have generated the most media noise since the details of the proposals were unveiled, the legislation would also require employers to provide a "clean and sanitary" work site, toilet facilities, washing facilities, shower facilities, change rooms and a procedure for the cleaning and disinfection of sex toys and other objects that come into contact with an employee's genitals, eyes, skin, or other mucous membranes.
Employers would also be required to prepare "specific control measures" to handle the disposal of contaminated sharps (that is, needles), broken glass and contaminated waste, and also provide annual training to all employees, during working hours, in procedures relating to "occupational exposure".
Opponents of the measure - such as the adult film industry's Free Speech Coalition - say the proposals would put undue commercial pressure on the industry, and risk pushing sections of the industry "underground".
They also argue that the legislation is unwieldy, focuses only on studio production, rather than owner-operator adult websites, which have now become the industry standard, and leaves adult production companies exposed to lawsuits.
Actual data on the size and relative economic value of the pornography industry is difficult to pinpoint, but estimates say that LA's porn industry has several thousand employees and is worth up to or in excess of $US1 billion ($1.4 billion); a decade ago The Los Angeles Times estimated the industry's worth at $US4 billion.
The proposal required just 365,880 signatures to qualify for a position on a planned ballot in November 2016; it was submitted with approximately 557,000 voter signatures.
California's Secretary of State Alex Padilla confirmed the proposal had passed the "signature verification" stage of the process and was now "eligible for the ballot".
