Ira Levine posts on Nina.com:
Nina and I, both through our work with AIM in peer counseling other performers, directors and producers, have sought to call attention to the dangers of sharing unwashed sex toys or using toys made with hazardous materials or using toys with incompatible types of lubes. It has been a pretty frustrating effort.
Understandably, the porn industry tends to focus on the more obvious dangers of disease exposure from human tissue than from inanimate objects, but the dangers posed by the latter are real, if not as lethal. HIV dies quickly on exposure to light and air and there have thus far been no documente4d cases of HIV transmission from anything other than direct blood-to-blood or serum-to-blood contact. However, the same cannot be said of a wide variety of other bad bugs. Check out the AIM Web site’s list of behavioral risks and you’ll find that many STDs and other infectious conditions can be transmitted via non-living vectors.
That’s why Nina and I always put condoms over sex toys to be re-used with multiple partners. The surfaces of many toys are made from porous materials that readily absorb and retain pathogens that can be passed on to the next user. In some respects, they represent more of a risk than actual human anatomy. Intact skin acts as a barrier against infection. If washed after exposure to a potentially contagious bug, it does a pretty good job of preventing passing microbes from making themselves at home. Not so the inorganic sex toy that has no internal or external defense mechanisms of its own.