The BP Oil Spill is an environmental disaster and a serious blow to the businesses and property owners along the Gulf Coast.

But did you know it also was killing "McMansion" sales across the nation?

Toll Brothers says worries about the spill has hit consumer confidence, and thus sales of homes. Here, a house being built in Raleigh, N.C.

Toll Brothers, the nation's largest luxury home builder, warned late Wednesday that its sales activity is running 20% lower than a year earlier. One reason: "worries about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and its effects on the economy and the environment have negatively impacted the outlook of American consumers,'' the company's Chief Financial Officer Joel Rassman said in a statement.

(Other reasons include the expiration of the home buyer tax credit and the fiscal crisis in Europe)

This isn't the only time Toll has blamed the housing market's problem on a disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (where incidentally, the company builds relatively few homes). Retiring CEO Bob Toll said in late 2006 that Hurricane Katrina, which made the U.S. look like "Bangladesh in a storm -- bodies floating upside down, the government seemingly unable to do anything about it" was the beginning of the end of the housing boom, because it shook American consumer confidence.

It wouldn't be a surprise if the oil spill becomes a convenient scapegoat for what ails businesses.

Consider the J. M. Smucker Co. That's right, Smucker's, the Orville, Ohio, jam and jelly maker. In its quarterly earnings report today, the company states that one of the risks to jam sales are "accidents, including the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and natural disasters, including crop failures and storm damage."

Other companies' problems from the spill seem to be less of a stretch. In a recent survey, Bank of America said money managers have sold energy stocks in record numbers amid the spill's aftermath. Only 7% of "global asset allocators" retain an overweight position on the sector, down from 37% in May, BofA reported.

Omega Protein Corp., a fish oil producer, said last month that "the oil slick has had an adverse effect on the Company's ability to operate in the fishing grounds east of the Mississippi River Delta, near its Moss Point, Mississippi facility,'' forcing the company to focus on different fishing grounds.

There is likely to be a flood of such warnings when the second-quarter earning season kicks into gear next month. Then we will get a sense about how far the plume spreads.