The corrosion behavior of sensitized AA5083 in aerated and deaerated 3.5 wt% NaCl solutions has been studied. The results indicated that an altered surface layer (ASL) with a recrystallized microstructure having no beta phase at the grain boundaries formed on sensitized AA5083 during polishing. The ASL prevented the exposure of beta phase at the surface and its dissolution at the alloy open circuit potential, even though this potential was above the breakdown potential of bulk beta phase. Selective dissolution of beta phase was observed when a cathodic reaction caused an increase in localized pH near intermetallic particles or after removal of the ASL by etching to expose the grain boundary beta phase. The different corrosion behavior of solutionized and sensitized AA5083 was clarified by testing etched samples. Removal of the ASL is therefore necessary to understand the initiation of intergranular corrosion on sensitized AA5083. (C) The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. All rights reserved.