  The deployment of the 5th-generation cellular networks (5G) and beyond has
triggered health concerns due to the electric and magnetic fields (EMF)
exposure. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture to minimize the
population exposure to EMF by considering a smart radio environment with a
reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). Then, we optimize the RIS phases to
minimize the exposure in terms of the exposure index (EI) while maintaining a
minimum target quality of service. The proposed scheme achieves up to 20%
reduction in EI compared to schemes without RISs.
