[영문]Objective. Although rapid epidemiologic investigations of toxic exposuresrequire estimates of individual exposure levels, objective measures of exposureare often unavailable. We investigated whether self-reported exposurehistories, when reviewed and classified by a panel of raters, provided a usefulexposure metric.Methods. A panel reviewed exposure histories as reported by people whoexperienced a chlorine release. The panelists received no information abouthealth-care requirements or specific health effects. To each exposure case,each panelist assigned one of five possible exposure severity ratings. Whenassigned ratings were not in initial agreement, the panelists discussed thecase and assigned a consensus rating. Percent agreement and kappa statisticsassessed agreement among panelists, Kendall’s W measured agreement amongpanelists in their overall ordering of the exposure histories, and Spearman’s rhocompared the resultant rankings with individual health outcome.Results. In 48% of the cases, the panelists’ initial ratings agreed completely.Overall, initial ratings for a given case matched the consensus rating 69%to 89% of the time. Pair-wise comparisons revealed 85% to 95% agreementamong panelists, with weighted kappa statistics between 0.69 and 0.83. Intheir overall ranking of the exposure histories, the panelists reached significantagreement (W50.90, p,0.0001). Disagreement arose most frequently regardingprobable chlorine concentration and duration of exposure. This disagreementwas most common when panelists differentiated between adjacentcategories of intermediate exposure. Panel-assigned exposure ratings significantlycorrelated with health outcome (Spearman’s rho50.56; p,0.0001).Conclusion. Epidemiologists and public health practitioners can elicit and reviewself-reported exposure histories and assign exposure severity ratings that predictmedical outcome. When objective markers of exposure are unavailable, panelassignedexposure ratings may be useful for rapid epidemiologic investigations.