ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Chloroformate

Okay kiddo, so imagine you're making a sandwich. You need bread, meat, cheese and some kind of sauce to add some flavor. Now imagine you're a scientist and you're trying to make a new kind of medicine. You need different ingredients to make this medicine, and one of the ingredients is something called a chloroformate.

A chloroformate is kind of like a sauce for the medicine. It helps to hold everything together and makes sure the medicine works the right way. It's made by mixing something called chloroform with another chemical called a carbonate. But just like you wouldn't want to eat too much sauce on your sandwich, you also have to be careful with chloroformate because it can be dangerous if you use too much.

Scientists use chloroformates to make all kinds of medicines, like painkillers and antibiotics. They have to be very careful when they use these chemicals, because they need to make sure they use the right amount so that the medicine will work properly and be safe for people to take.