Effects of tourmaline on growth of three kinds of microorganisms

Tourmaline is a kind of widespread minerals and has been used in many fields of society. Owing to the special electric properties, tourmaline can destroy the hydrogen bond between water molecules. The growth of microorganism may be affected with addition of tourmaline; therefore the effects of tourmaline on three different kinds of microorganisms were studied using microcalorimetric method. The kinetic parameters of growth process were obtained through the thermogenic curves. The results show that high concentration tourmaline inhibited the growth of prokaryotic cells (the growth rate constant of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus decreased 68.77 and 35.25% at tourmaline concentration of 160 g/L), while promoted eukaryotic cell (the growth rate constant of Candida albicans increased 40.73% at tourmaline concentration of 160 g/L). However, the low concentration tourmaline had complex effects on growth of the studied microorganisms. Key words: Microcalorimetric, water cluster, growth rate, inhibitory ratio.