Blueside down,
Before I came here, I too had the !!!! scared out of me by these sorts of threads. But blindly we came anyway. I am now leaving and taking my family back home because of the pollution. It really is BAAAAAAAAAD. And with kids, your worry will be ceaseless.
I don't actually regret coming - the expats here have made it a fabulous stay for the number of years we have been here - great people, great barbecues, great nights out. It has been a great adventure and HK IS a great place to live when the skies are clear. But that is getting rarer and the pollution is getting thicker. I cannot subject my kids to ANY risk at all of health problems due to the industrial waste we are forced to breathe. ANY risk at ALL for my precious papooses is too high. And any effects are a long way off appearing, so as the guys above have said, statistics now are meaningless.
Just to add a tad more to the life expectancy debate. The figures are derived by actually looking at deaths across the whole population - so African nations with high infant mortality rates are obviously lower on the life expectancy scale. So if you had a population with 15 million centenarians, one would think life expectancy would be a nice high figure, but if that same place had a huge infant mortality rate then the life expectancy figure is obviously deceptively lower. Hong Kong's life expectancy figure is high because infant mortality is rare. But as said earlier, the real effects of this relatively new phenomena will not ramificate for years.
And it is two new coal fired power stations commissioned per week.
Mate, get your wife out here for a week in December/January, and then when you find you can barely see across the harbour through the filthy brown crap - THEN you can make an informed decision.
But me?? I'm gong home in 2 months.