The initial studies into the oxidation of aliphatic polyamides have been credited to Sharkley and Mochel, Levantovskaya, and Lock and Sagar. These investigations showed there were three principal overall reactions mentioned in the image.
The results also showed that products from the thermo-oxidation of aliphatic polyamides were in agreement with the mechanistic study of model amides. Their conclusion was that either thermal oxidation or photo-oxidation is initiated by abstraction of a hydrogen atom from an N-vicinal methylene group and propagates by oxidation of the formed macro radical.