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Two equal-armed crosses in medical settings, one of which is protected by treaty.
Colour is the whole distinction and it matters legally. The red cross is a protective emblem under the Geneva Conventions and may not be displayed commercially; the green cross marks a pharmacy in much of Europe and carries no protection at all. This is why shop-bought first-aid kits do not use a red one.
A red cross is a treaty-protected emblem and may not be used commercially. A green cross marks a pharmacy in much of Europe and carries no such protection.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Red cross emblem | Pharmacy green cross |
|---|---|---|
| Colour | red and white | green and white |
| Red cross emblem | Pharmacy green cross | |
|---|---|---|
| Colour | Red on white | Green |
| Status | A protective emblem under the Geneva Conventions | A commercial convention with no legal status |
| Who may display it | Authorised medical and humanitarian services only | Any pharmacy |
| Misuse | An offence; in armed conflict, a war crime | Not applicable |
| Origin | Adopted 1864, the Swiss flag reversed | Regional convention with no single origin |
| Standardised shade? | Yes, by the Movement | No |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Pharmacy green cross — A red cross is a treaty-protected emblem and may not be used commercially. A green cross marks a pharmacy in much of Europe and carries no such protection. | Commonly confused with Red cross emblem — Colour is the whole distinction and it matters legally: green marks a shop, red is a treaty-protected emblem no shop may display. |
The legal claims here rest on treaty text and on the ICRC's own statement of the emblems' status, which is the strongest evidential position in the catalogue. The pharmacy cross has no governing body at all, and the asymmetry is the point of the comparison.
International Committee of the Red Cross · retrieved 2026-08-02
The ICRC is the guardian of the emblems under the Geneva Conventions. Authoritative for what the emblems mean in international humanitarian law, who may display them, and what constitutes misuse. It does not govern the unrelated commercial and civil uses of a red cross shape.
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols
International Committee of the Red Cross · retrieved 2026-08-02
The treaty texts themselves. Cited for the legal status of the protective emblems, which the First Convention establishes and the 2005 Third Additional Protocol extends to the red crystal.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-08-02
Tertiary reference. Cited for how a mark is used and read in ordinary practice, and for competing accounts of an origin where the record is genuinely unsettled. Never cited for the content of a treaty or a standard.
A dram is three scruples. On the page the two symbols are built from the same looped stroke and differ in where a second stroke crosses it, so a hurried hand or a poor copy could turn one into the other and a threefold dosing error with it. Both are obsolete in dispensing, replaced by metric units during the twentieth century, and this pair is the clearest argument for why.
The becquerel counts nuclear decays — one per second — and says nothing about harm. The sievert weights absorbed energy by the kind of radiation delivering it, and so estimates biological effect. A becquerel of one isotope and a becquerel of another can carry very different risk, which is exactly why exposure limits and medical doses are stated in sieverts and never in becquerels.
Count what is around the centre. Three solid blades radiating from a small disc is ionising radiation; three broken rings overlapping a central circle is biological hazard. They are the same size, the same colours and the same three-fold arrangement, which is why signage catalogues themselves get them wrong — and the responses could not be less alike. One calls for distance, shielding and time; the other for containment, disinfection and a disposal route.
The FDI system gives each tooth two digits — the first the quadrant, the second the position from the midline — and is spoken as two separate digits, so tooth one-six is the sixth tooth of the first quadrant. The Universal system numbers the permanent teeth straight through from one to thirty-two around both arches. Sixteen means different teeth in the two systems, so a bare number is ambiguous unless the convention is named with it.