The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the University of Montana's Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) co-hosted a conference entitled "International Biomass Smoke and Health Effects" in Missoula, MT, on August 21 and 22, 2007. The goal of this conference was to bring together experts from diverse fields to review the state of the science in several key areas involving biomass smoke research, as well as identify future research directions. Researchers, physicians, and representatives from regulatory agencies from around the country and world met for a cross-disciplinary exploration of many issues related to biomass smoke research. Major topics of discussion included risk assessment, biomarkers of exposure, toxicology and animal study design, health outcomes measures/study design, and communications gaps. In addition to multiple presentations, breakout sessions were focused on identifying future research directions. In this issue of Inhalation Toxicology, we present the findings from each of these breakout sessions in an effort to summarize what is known in these key areas, and to identify those emerging issues in the field of biomass smoke research.