Should β-mercaptoethanol and anything that touches it be handled only under fume hoods for safety aspects?
&#x3b2;-Mercaptoethanol is not that dangerous a chemical. Yes, you should not drink it, you shouldn’t dip your bare fingers in it, you shouldn’t inhale tons of it and you shouldn’t use it to rub yourself down. But other than that it is hardly more dangerous than most other thiols. Simple methanol is probably more toxic and is also routinely handled.

The thing about &#x3b2;-mercaptoethanol is that it &ensp;stinks&emsp;like&emsp;hell.&ensp; And it has the tendency to stick around stinking for quite some time. Like with most thio-compounds, you can smell it long before it becomes seriously dangerous; your sense of smell is a warning against being too risky. You know yourself that the gloves stink if you used the bottle, that the pipette tips stink after pipetting it and that any flasks that contained it tend to stink for quite a while afterwards.

And that is the reason why some labs rigorously segregate it from other chemicals; have dedicated wastes for pipette tips and gloves all kept under a fume it. It is all simply meant to stop the stench as early as possible, to keep it confined in a single fume hood and keep most of the lab air smelling better. The safety aspect is secondary. If you develop a routine of changing equipment every time after handling &#x3b2;-mercaptoethanol, you are less likely to forget to take off your glove and the lab has less smell to deal with.

Therefore, you would be doing your lab colleagues a favour by keeping the bottle confined within its own small plastic bag; but it’s only an olfactory favour, not that much a health favour.