Remove Deleted Articles from Database: Is it Safe?

[HexManiac]

I notice that when you delete an article or article content part, phpwcms doesn't delete it from the database.

Instead, it just flags the article as deleted by setting the 'article_deleted' field or 'acontent_trash' field to 9.

This results in the database growing in size over time.

Does anyone know whether it's safe to remove these entries from the database by executing SQL statements like these?:

DELETE FROM phpwcms_article WHERE article_deleted=9
DELETE FROM phpwcms_articlecontent WHERE acontent_trash=9

or will this break something?