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Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into an environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the physical systems or living organisms they are in.^[1] Pollution can take the form of chemical substances, or energy, such as noise, heat, or light energy. Pollutants, the elements of pollution, can be foreign substances or energies, or naturally occurring; when naturally occurring, they are considered contaminants when they exceed natural levels. Pollution is often classed as point source or nonpoint source pollution.

Sometimes the term pollution is extended to include any substance when it occurs at such unnaturally high concentration within a system that it endangers the stability of that system. For example, water is innocuous and essential for life, and yet at very high concentration, it could be considered a pollutant if a person were to drink an excessive quantity of water, the physical system could be so overburdened that breakdown and even death could result. Another example is the potential of excessive noise to induce imbalance in a person's mental state, resulting in malfunction and psychosis;

Humankind has had some effect upon the environment since the Paleolithic era during which the ability to generate fire was acquired. In the Iron Age, the use of tooling led to the practice of metal grinding on a small scale and resulted in minor accumulations of discarded material probably easily dispersed without too much impact. Human wastes would have polluted rivers or water sources to some degree. However, these effects could be expected predominantly to be dwarfed by the natural world.

The first advanced civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Persia, Greece and Rome increased the use of water for their manufacture of goods, increasingly forged metal and created fires of wood and peat for more elaborate purposes (for example, bathing, heating). Still, at this time the scale of higher activity did not disrupt ecosystems or greatly alter air or water quality.

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