There are many different types of pollution that have been identified by people. Yet they have one very important aspect to them that is rarely discussed in the environmental community: the psychology of pollution. In other words, pollution is what you believe pollution to be. That is not to say pollution has a real impact on our natural world and truly exists, but it's also a value judgment.

Pollution kills and damages. But it also has a major impact in our decisions in our lives. Nobody wants to live in a polluted neighborhood, or downwind from a factory that is emitting chemicals that cause cancer or birth defects. Nobody wants to swim in a polluted river, in fear of their health. It might be perfectly safe to eat one fish a month from a PCB contaminated river, but do you want to do that?

If you don't want to fish in the river or live in a neighborhood in fear of pollution, is there any incentive to clean up that river or pay tax dollars to maintain that polluted neighborhood? Or will that neighborhood be abandoned and allowed to leach it's toxins out, and the river be just another dumping ground for untreated sewage whenever it rains too hard for an antiquated sewage treatment plant? Pollution only leads to more pollution.

On the other hand, if you didn't know about the pollution would there be the same stigma attached to that polluted river or neighborhood? Maybe. But people would still be getting sick, and there would a negative value attached to that resource. People aren't dumb and can put together the results of smoke coming from a smoke stack and illness. Moreover, denial of pollution doesn't make pollution go away.

If the most important aspect of pollution is the psychology of pollution, then what makes up pollution over relatively harmless effulgent that is part of modern society? It is pollution that has a negative impact on a politically powerful group. The negative impact is not necessarily concrete like a person getting cancer or loggers loosing tree stock by acid rain.

The impact might be one of empathy. Empathy is a very important part of any psychology, and can often be far more important then actual impacts on any particular group. People feel sorry when the pretty pink bunnies are dying of cancer, or when the eagles can not have babies. People feel less sorry when it's mosquito's dying from environmental toxins produced by man.

In cases of politically unpopular things, it might not even be considered pollution. Who doesn't want more mosquito dead? Pollution is what ever has an impact on a politically sensitive item that is valued by society. A landfill cited in a poor neighborhood that's sickening residents will not be considered polluting the neighborhood unless somebody raises their concerns and the political system embraces those people.