Spice mining was a very dangerous job. Kessel had no natural atmosphere and factories on the surface created air; however, the air was still too thin to breathe without an oxygen mask. Spice was activated by light, forcing workers to work in complete darkness or under dim, red lights that lacked photons energetic enough to trigger it. Along with the obvious dangers of energy spiders, glitterstim threads were very sharp, and could easily remove digits if the worker was not careful.