“…Thus, we conclude that congruent dissolution of long fibers is an unlikely general clearance mechanism. This conclusion is reinforced by the observation that for many MMVFs the long fibers (say > 20 µm) clear, apparently, much faster than short fibers (Bernstein et al, 1995;Bellmann & Muhle, 1995), which immediately introduces a length dependency of clearance that cannot be explained by a simple, single dissolution model, or by slower intracellular dissolution of the short fibers. As we have seen in Table 4, K dis at pH 4.5 is significantl y lower than at pH 7 for a limited range of MMVF compositions.…”