OC WEEKLY: The website If It Was My Home allows anyone to personalize the magnitude of the British Petroleum (BO) Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and spill–also known as “the greatest environmental disaster in United States history.” The site opens with a map superimposing the shape of the spill as of the day the page is visited over the general region the user’s computer is located in. For instance, mine right now shows the spill epicenter as Los Angeles. However, type any town into a field and get a gander at how mucked up that region would be with a spill this size. Currently spewing 1,050,000 U.S. gallons of crude per day, the third serious incident involving BP in this country over the past five years has so far killed 253 sea turtles and 29 dolphins. The 
death count, like the spill area provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is updated every 24 hours. MORE
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NEW YORK TIMES: The government confirmed Tuesday that plumes of dispersed oil were spreading far below the ocean surface from the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, but it said the concentrations of chemicals in the water were relatively low. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released test results from samples taken by researchers at the University of South Florida. They showed detectable levels of petroleum compounds as far as 42 miles northeast of the leaking well. MORE