Link to Autism

The big question is if autism rates are going up.

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However, experts say that the increasing prevalence of ASD in the CDC’s latest report has more to do with better monitoring and diagnosis of the disorder, rather than a de facto rise in the number of children who have ASD.
Autism Rate Increases: The Reasons

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Personally, I doubt there is a single cause of autism. Much like cancer, I suspect there will be a lot of risk factors, including genetics.I would also suspect that autism was around before processed foods.

To be more specific, it isn't the thimerosal that was present in past vaccines. It may still be possible that strong immune reactions to vaccines could play a role in some rare cases. I'm not sure if there are direct parallels in that sense. With cancer you are looking at mutations in cells, but not so with autism. Autism is developmental which is a bit more complex.

I was under the impression that autism first showed in the first few years of life, so we can probably ignore the 10+ stage of development.It also isn't established that propionic acid affects fetal brain development at all. The study that you linked looked at the effects of of propionic acid on cultured brain cells in a petri dish. They never looked at actual brain development. They also didn't establish that the levels of propionic acid used in the experiments are representative of levels found in the brain of mothers or infants who ingest processed foods. Next, we don't even know if the changes in the cultured cells correlates with autism.It's an interesting paper that could be used to justify further research into propionic acid, but it is far from an actual piece of evidence for the cause of autism.