Clearance of xenobiotics from rivers

The aim of this paper was to apply the concept of clearance to the elimination of a xenobiotic (e.g. sodium fluoresceine) from the section of a river. This concept was tested using three different field experiments in the river Aare (1994) and in the river Rhine (1988, 1989) and two different methods of calculation. Median clearance values of sodium fluoresceine cleared from these rivers ranged from 193 to 1011 m3/sec. It is concluded that the clearance concept used in medicine can also be applied to calculate the clearance of xenobiotics from rivers. However, more data are necessary to further evaluate this concept.